The Active Archive Alliance announced that it will demonstrate a complete active archive solution at Storage Networking World's Hands-on Lab in Dallas, Texas this week. The Active Archive Alliance is a non-profit storage industry association dedicated to promoting active archives for simplified, online access to all archived data.
 
The 30-minute lab and lecture modules provide participants hands-on experience demonstrating the simple, integrated and affordable new methods available to migrate data from primary storage to tape, while keeping information online and accessible for long-term retention and compliance demands. This lab demonstration will show how end users can use new technologies to eliminate the need for cumbersome tape backups, and keep more data online by leveraging tape solutions as a long-term active archive.

The Alliance's active archive lab configuration consists of a storage management server using Spectra Logic's T120 tape library with LTO-5 drives and media, and nTier500 archive and backup application server; Compellent Storage Center Enterprise SAN; and QStar's Network Migrator Active Archive software. SNW attendees can participate in the active archive Hands-on-Lab at the following times:

Monday, October 11, from 10:15 – 12:00 noon and 3:15 – 5:15 p.m.
Tuesday, October 12, from 8:15 – 10:15 a.m. and 2:00 – 3:45 p.m.
Wednesday, October 13, from 10:30 – 12:30 p.m. and 4:00 – 5:45 p.m.

Benefits of active archives include:

• Automatic archiving of data from disk to tape, resulting in lower data storage costs and increased data protection.
• Compliance with corporate and regulatory data retention standards and eDiscovery tactics.
• Increased ease of managing large data sets over extended time periods.

The active archive solution featured at SNW highlights a tiered storage environment with easy to use interfaces for policy creation and configuration. These interfaces enable easy management of online access to all data within an active archive.

Active Archive Alliance -- Participating members

"Many end users struggle with how to optimize their disk and tape deployments," said Bruce Kornfeld, vice president of business development and alliances, Compellent. "The active archive is demonstrating how IT departments can use new technologies to build efficient, easy-to-use archives where their production data can easily be recovered from disk while all their data stays available online in their tape archiving system." Compellent is exhibiting at SNW booth #215.

"Participants will be able to use QStar Network Migrator to provide a comprehensive range of policies to govern data migration and management," said Dave Thomson, vice president of worldwide sales, QStar. "In the lab, data will automatically be moved or copied to the server and participants can quickly see how the system is managed, and practice accessing and retrieving data."

"The SNW Hands-on Lab is a great opportunity to 'test drive' a complete active archive solution, and to see how today's tape library solutions can provide the most efficient online file system storage," said Molly Rector, vice president of marketing and product management, Spectra Logic, and Active Archive Alliance board chair. "Spectra Logic's modern, intelligent tape libraries provide active archiving storage that delivers power efficiency, high density, reliability, low cost, fast access times and easily integration with archive management applications – making it easy for organizations to achieve simplified access to all their archived data."

The mission of the Active Archive Alliance is to provide organizations with the best practices, tools and information they need to achieve simplified access to the online storage of their archived data. Other members of the Alliance include FileTek, Inc., a founding partner, SGI, Atempo and GRAU Data.