Spectra Logic, the deep storage experts, today announced enhancements to the Spectra® BlackPearl™ Deep Storage Gateway that now allow direct archive to Amazon’s public cloud offering. With this new offering, Spectra BlackPearl can integrate directly with Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Standard, and can automatically restore data archived to Glacier and Infrequent Access (Standard - IA). Spectra BlackPearl now provides an additional tier of reliable data storage, further strengthening its powerful automatic tiering to nearline disk and digital tape. 

The Spectra BlackPearl Deep Storage Gateway is recognized for its ability to enable massive amounts of data to be stored forever, at virtually no cost. Acting as an object storage gateway for data storage and management, BlackPearl provides a single interface that lets users easily send and retrieve large amounts of data from any platform—tape, disk, other BlackPearls, and now, the public cloud.

“Private cloud storage enabled by BlackPearl provides the best option for balancing performance and cost; however, some customer workflows benefit greatly from incorporating a public cloud storage infrastructure,” said Matt Starr, Spectra Logic’s CTO. “Public cloud works best when a disaster recovery copy is needed; when wide data distribution is called for; to create geographic dispersion of data; and when other cloud-based features can be leveraged, such as automatic transcoding. The new Spectra hybrid storage ecosystem means that Spectra customers don’t have to choose between public and private cloud; BlackPearl brings them together seamlessly.”

The Spectra hybrid storage ecosystem: 

·       Allows data to be moved easily to the public cloud for backup or disaster recovery.

·       Ensures true genetic diversity of data storage via storage on different media types and geographic dispersion of data—two key elements of a solid digital preservation strategy. 

·       Creates a multi-tier private cloud to store a copy of frequently accessed data on online disk, and archive infrequent or rarely accessed data indefinitely on Spectra ArcticBlue™   disk-based archive or Spectra Logic tape. BlackPearl also includes an automatic, time-based expiration policy that can be customised by the storage administrator.

·       Shares content globally by utilising the public cloud’s inherent infrastructure to make content available to disparate users and sites worldwide.

·       Provides data retrieval management policies to limit or prevent unexpected retrieval charges through BlackPearl’s Advanced Bucket Management.