Maureen O'Gara

Quantum Tuesday introduced a new storage line based on next-generation object storage technology geared to Big Data that challenges traditional storage solutions.

The company, which has over 6,000 Big Data customer installations worldwide, says conventional RAID drives aren’t up to handling large datasets. They struggle with drive errors and long rebuild times. And mirrored RAID is pricey.

Quantum says customers asked it to come up with a solution without the latency of tape.

The new widgetry, called Lattus, based on what Quantum calls wide area storage, is fine-tuned to multi-petabytes of Big Data management and is supposed to deliver optimized disk-based archives that provide greater data accessibility, unparalleled scalability and self-healing fifteen 9s durability so data is never lost.

It believes Lattus will solve Big Data pain points.

It should cut the cost of high-end mirrored RAID by 50%-70%.

Lattus integrates dispersed object storage with Quantum’s file system technologies to enable globally distributed, extremely scalable and accessible multi-petabyte data repositories.

This new approach to archiving is supposed to ensure the storage of data forever on disk without interruption or migration. It’ll self-migrate for seamless upgrades to new storage technologies.

Lattus-X is the first product in the new family. It’s a wide area storage solution with NAS access that should be generally available next month from Quantum and its resellers and partners. Pricing will begin at $675,000 for a base system of 500TB.

Besides native HTTP REST access, Lattus-X also provides CIFS/NFS access for users and applications.

Quantum plans to introduce two other Lattus products next year including a policy-tiered disk archive storage system called Lattus-M that leverages its StorNext Storage Manager software followed by a cloud-based disk archive offering.

Lattus-M, which should enable customers to have a new secondary storage tier option that offers lower latency and more predictable restore times than tape at a price appropriate for long-term storage, is due in the first half.

StorNext will be able to migrate data automatically to a Lattus-based disk archive.

Later in 2013, in conjunction with partners, Quantum plans to introduce a set of Lattus-based services that enable shared multi-tenant, encrypted storage – with a combination of NAS, StorNext and native cloud interfaces – as a second or third tier in the cloud.

The widgetry is targeting multi-site industries such as digital media, science research, surveillance and energy exploration.

There’s native HTTP REST support for web and cloud-based access and cost-effective enterprise archive capability across global locations.

The widgetry includes a Fountain Coding Algorithm, a type of Forward Error Correction (FEC), used in mature communications technology like space missions and cell phones, designed with failure in mind that assumes components will fail. Multiple copies of encoded data are distributed across object storage nodes.