Plasmon's ultra-density optical WORM disks, with a capacity of up to 60GB each, are state of the art for organizations seeking long media life. Like all WORM disks, they need WORM-aware archiving software to write to them. Plasmon's current archiving system, the Enterprise Active Archive, uses a server running Nexsan's Assureon NAS software as a front end. Data is typically written to a RAID array when initially stored, then migrated after 60 to 90 days as the rate of access falls off and long-term storage becomes more important than access time.
All of today's popular tape formats, from LTO in the midrange to Sun's T10000 at the high end, have firmware in the drive that identifies special WORM cartridges, and once data is written to them, prevents overwriting or erasure. With capacities of 800GB per cartridge, WORM tape, especially if used behind a RAID cache, is the lowest cost, and greenest, solution for very large archives where IT can deal with file access times measured in minutes. RAID or even MAID uses power when not being accessed. Optical disks take lots of floor space. High density and no need for power when not being accessed make tape the new green.
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Contents Under Pressure
Rather than use a file's name and location in a hierarchy of directories as the primary identifier, as conventional file systems do, CAS systems generate a globally unique identifier, or GUID, for each file as it's saved using a hash function like MD-5 or SHA-1. The file is stored based on that GUID. If the CAS device provides a CIFS or NFS interface -- and most do -- it does a database lookup to find the GUID for the full file path, then uses the GUID to retrieve the file.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
