Monday, April 16th 2012

Sony Helping Create New Mass-Storage Optical Disc Archive Solutions

Sony Corporation today announced that it will be commercializing a next-generation optical disc archive storage system. Sony will also organize an Optical Disc Archive Advisory Group to promote the adoption of this new storage format among the various companies in related industries.

Sony's new system will deliver superior long-term storage capabilities, which are enabled through the use of media built to withstand changes in temperature and humidity, and is dust and water resistance. Furthermore, the new system provides guaranteed intergenerational compatibility and eliminates the need to re-archive copies of past archive data, offering a more user-friendly and dependable long-term storage solution.

By Fall 2012, Sony will be releasing various optical disc media for archive storage solutions into the market that is compatible with the "ODS-D55U" drive unit equipped with a USB 3.0 interface and storage capacities between 300 GB-1.5 TB (model name: ODC1500R etc.) Sony plans to consecutively enhance its product lineup upon this initial release.

Additionally, Sony has organized Optical Disc Archive Advisory Group open to participation by media and entertainment companies from across the globe to further build the market for video image archive solutions.

With this group, Sony will collaborate with partners to establish and maintain a solution and application software environment that advances optimum specifications and system architectures among other areas, while anticipating future trends and demand in the archive solutions segment. The broadcasters and motion picture companies listed below have already announced their participation in the Optical Disc Archive Advisory Group.

This collaboration will consider and study the potential for utilization of optical disc media in their archive workflow and develop appropriate application software for future media asset management and distribution strategies. Workshops and pilot projects will start to support these mutual activities, targeted for product shipment timing of Fall 2012.

Furthermore, in addition to the production of media and drive units, Sony will collaborate with a variety of other manufacturers in related business areas such as storage media, robotics (automated media exchange systems), middleware (hierarchical storage management and control) and application software for media asset management (including media management and search) for the purpose of developing system solutions for media archive applications.

The following manufacturers who have already expressed their support for the Optical Disc Archive:

- ASG-Atempo, Dalet, Front Porch Digital, Harris, SGL, Square Box Systems Ltd, TDK Corporation, Vizrt

Specifically, TDK Corporation has announced both its full support of the Optical Disc Archive and that it will begin manufacturing disc media under license from Sony.

In addition to the commercialization of various products, Sony will continue to promote its efforts through Optical Disc Archive Advisory Group activities. The establishment of an open platform so that the valuable video content stored in tape media can be archived and passed on to the next generation in an optimal format will help industry move toward creating a new market for archive solutions.
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34 Comments on Sony Helping Create New Mass-Storage Optical Disc Archive Solutions

#26
Easy Rhino
Linux Advocate
KreijArchiving Terabytes of information in the "cloud" costs you a monthly fee. Sitting on high-density optical disk(s) does not.

All in all, it really depends upon your needs, your budget and how automated you want the access to archival data.
sure as with all things IT related.
Posted on Reply
#27
Scrizz
I definitely do not want to use the cloud as a backup or even archival purposes...
I've already lost so much stuff.
:(


I blame digibuc >_>
Posted on Reply
#28
Kreij
Senior Monkey Moderator
Many companies who sell you "space in the cloud" are renting space from large server farms owned by someone else who has cloud services. So if the wind blows the cloud away, you can't do diddly and neither can the company your paying.

I'll stay in the dirt.
Posted on Reply
#29
L'Eliminateur
As a sysadmin as well and system integrator, i rather have my data archived on ultra-high-density LTO tapes AND they have +15 years archival life.

Plus it's an OPEN standard with a clearly defined and real roadmap (and DLT even failed hard against it), whilst sony is always doomed to fail thanks to their propiecrap technology (MOs?, DAT?, VXA?) with ridiculous pricing(even for enterprise standards).

Companies want hard copies of the data in their vaults and offsite highly secured vaults, all that "cloud cloud" is pure nonsense, it's like "virtual money".
Posted on Reply
#30
burtram
This to me, seems like the new "high tech" version of the old tape drives.
Posted on Reply
#31
[H]@RD5TUFF
Easy Rhinothis seems crazy expensive and full of fail. optical discs are not as dependable and far more expensive than a raid array. very lame.
Exactly! The days of optical media are long gone.
Posted on Reply
#32
Steevo
KreijOkay here's my take on it as a sys admin.

Archival storage is for data that is not being accessed with any regularity or perhaps not at all unless there is some need to get historical references to something. Many times access to archival data is based upon a request for access (at which time the archive can be pulled and put online) and not on an immediate need.
Some IT departments will keep a portion of their archives online(or at least readily available) based upon the likelyhood of access need, and simply pull obsolete or unused data by request only.

Anyway, for small and medium sized businesses (and even some large businesses), not running HDD arrays can reduce overhead and replacement costs by utilizing other archival mediums (tapes, ODs), when high data availability and high access performance is not imperative.

As far as Sony using a propretary format that only works with there stuff, that's almost a given. But proprietary does not equal fail if there is a genuine market need (or desire) for this type of format.

As always, time and the markets will determine this projects success or failure.
We use Tape still on our AS/400, its a PITA. Nightly backups. However we run RAID 5 in it, and on our other server. The other server gets backed up to disk that is kept in the safe. More or less prone to damage than tape in the event of emergency? Both are screwed, but a 15 minute system incremental update over firewire VS a 1 hour or longer backup to tape? Tapes cost alot, wear out, and the Tandberg drive had to be replaced two years ago at the low price of almost a grand.


Tape = crap.

HDD storage is cheap and reliable.
L'EliminateurAs a sysadmin as well and system integrator, i rather have my data archived on ultra-high-density LTO tapes AND they have +15 years archival life.

Plus it's an OPEN standard with a clearly defined and real roadmap (and DLT even failed hard against it), whilst sony is always doomed to fail thanks to their propiecrap technology (MOs?, DAT?, VXA?) with ridiculous pricing(even for enterprise standards).

Companies want hard copies of the data in their vaults and offsite highly secured vaults, all that "cloud cloud" is pure nonsense, it's like "virtual money".
Cloud is reliable as long as you are hosting it with a reputable company. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple (really, but no), and many others.

Tape is still the primary way, but it is going to die sooner or later.
Posted on Reply
#33
L'Eliminateur
Steeve, only a grand?, and since you say Tandberg i'm assuming it's DLT?

LTO-5 drives cost upwards of 2~3K, and they're well worth it.

If you have a decent backup software that implements D2D2T with good rotation, then the old tapes are vaulted offsite (one tape per month maybe) and you retain the closest backups in the intermediate cheap sata disk array.

i don't see tape dying not even in mid term, it's going to continue to be the bechmark for backups.
The change is going to be for SOHO, that in the past had no options but shitty DAT drives (they have USB DAT nowadays, but noone sane buys those, slow as hell, unreliable as any other Sony product), now with 2008R2 support those small businesses uses inexpensive external USB drives for backup.
(Interesting fact that 2008R2 dropped tape support for "ntbackup" -not that anyone used it on 2008 anyways-)
Posted on Reply
#34
Syborfical
Is this just more proprietary Sony crap?
Posted on Reply
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