Secondary Tier to Offload File Servers
Secure Long-term Storage
Tape / Cloud Alternative
Intuitive Content Portal
Massive Scalability
Accessible from Anywhere
With data growing at an astronomical pace, storing, managing, and protecting it has become a pressing concern. The number of files and their changing relevance overwhelms traditional file servers and NAS devices. Yet much of the space is consumed by files that are seldom used but must be retained for historical and regulatory compliance reasons.
These problems are best addressed with an on-premises active archive storage solution that’s tailored for secure, cost-effective long-term data retention and ready access. While cloud and tape are amongst the available options, they bring along many inherent challenges in terms of cost, security, and performance. Our active archive solution offers a better alternative.
- Have you outgrown your existing file storage infrastructure?
- Are you struggling with enabling distributed data access?
- Is your existing file storage too expensive for data best kept on cheaper secondary storage tier?
- Is cloud storage overrunning your budget and causing access delays?
- Is your data locked in a tape archive without easy search and access?
- Do you have 100s of TBs of files, scaling to PBs in the future?
Store and manage large volumes of data on instantly accessible active archive
Rest Assured Your Data Archives Will Be On When and How You Need Them.
Solve your data storage challenges by using DataCore Swarm, a software-defined object storage solution, that complements your primary file servers with an on-premises active archive. Easily scale your long-term secondary storage tier incrementally from a few hundred terabytes (TBs) to multiple petabytes (PBs) and even exabytes (EBs) without having to restructure file systems or change access patterns. Automatically offload video files, multimedia images, old and inactive data, log files, backups, etc. where they can be readily recalled when needed.
Swarm offers several advantages over other archive tier alternatives such as public cloud storage and tape libraries. Keeping the data on-premises eliminates concerns over data sovereignty and long network latency delays. Costs are predictable every month, eliminating potential billing surprises when cloud storage utilization increases. And unlike tape, which can’t be randomly searched and can be difficult to recover from, files archived on disks onsite can be quickly and reliably retrieved with ease.
- Keep media content online, searchable, and accessible
- Reduce costs and optimize shared storage
- Gain on-demand access and enterprise protection to archives
- Easily manage thousands of tenants and billions of files across sites
- Spend less time managing access to media, stream content directly from secondary storage
- Enable seamless access to files via S3 and HTTP(S)
- Scale quickly on any mix of hardware – all within your budget
A Flexible Data Archive Solution That Adapts to Your Evolving Needs
Media files (videos, audio recordings, multimedia images, etc.) are a good example of files that quickly age and are seldom accessed after their initial use. A prime candidate for data preservation, they need to be tucked away on lower-cost active archive for retention, future use, and compliance.
Migrating them from file servers to the active archive helps you optimize storage and access at every stage of the digital asset lifecycle – from production to delivery to long-term data preservation. With DataCore Swarm object storage, you can retain what you need, ensure media integrity, and keep assets online and accessible for reuse and monetization.
- Free up space on primary block/file storage by archiving media files to lower-cost object storage
- Integrate into your video production workflows and media management framework
- Get easy access to searching and retrieving files from the archive through a web-based content portal (accessible over HTTP/S3)
- Set role-based access control for users according to your security policies
- Stream videos from archive without downloading them to a local folder
- Easily edit and clip footage from large video files from storage and share them with other users
High-Throughput and Secure Data Archiving and Management Solution: A Real-World Object Storage Use Case
Why You Should Choose Swarm as Your Active Archive Storage Solution
Ultimate Scalability to Meet Growing Data Demand
- Easily scale from 100s of TBs to multiple PBs of data
- Scale object storage cluster with any standard x86 server hardware
- Runs from RAM and makes available market-leading 95% capacity of storage space for your data
- Scale capacity and throughput in under than 90 seconds after initial deployment
On-Demand Access to Your Archived Files
- Retrieve data on-demand from always-on active archive
- Enable data access via S3 and HTTP(S) protocols
- Enable distributed access by multiple users from different locations
- Simplify search and query operations through metadata-driven indexing and classification of data
Maximum Data Protection and Compliance
- Ensure data immutability with Legal Hold, WORM integration, and S3 object locking
- Establish content integrity using Integrity Seals
- Apply data encryption in flight and at rest
- Track storage access and activity with audit trails
- Archive and protect data for as long as needed to meet compliance regulations
Simplified Management and Operation
- A single IT admin can manage thousands of nodes and hundreds of PBs of data easily
- Optimize hardware footprint by adding higher density, more efficient drives to servers with zero downtime
- Use any combination of hardware including different server vendors, chassis size, and HDD/SSD type or size
Avoid Downtime and Ensure Operational Continuity
- Increase data durability through erasure coding and replication at the cluster or object level
- Proactively create data copies and store them locally or in a secondary site
- Leverage automatic failover to recover from disruptions
- Automatically back up to public cloud (e.g, Wasabi or Amazon Glacier) for DR
Recover Fast from Hardware Failures and Outages
- Leverage an intelligent self-healing mechanism to work together and recover from failures and outages
- A built-in health processor continually checks for failed hardware, bit rot, replica or erasure coding anomalies, and network problems
- Avoid data loss from node-level, cluster-level, and site-level failure
Simplify Active Archiving to Swarm Using DataCore FileFly and Reduce Storage TCO
Replace Cloud and Tape Storage with DataCore Swarm On-premises Active Archive
Alternative to Public Cloud Storage
- Protect data in-house, on your terms
- No data sovereignty issues
- Granular control of security and compliance
- Affordable storage – no hidden costs, data transfer fees, egress charges
- No cloud service latency for data access
- Flexible choice of hardware
Alternative to LTO Tape Storage
- Instant access to data over S3/HTTP
- Parallel processing of requests for distributed workloads
- Metadata-enriched search, indexing, tagging
- Granular object-level policy definition for data retention and protection
- Self-management and self-healing of nodes
Get Started with Swarm, Software-Defined Object Storage
Additional Resources
Store your growing data on scalable & secure active archive. No more insane cloud costs!
Join thousands of IT pros who have benefitted from DataCore solutions.
“Scalability is one of the slickest things about Swarm. One sweet thing with the platform is when you drop a new node in, it builds itself from the ground up. If you want to add a 72 TB or PB node you just drop it in.”
John Gillam – British Telecommunications
CTO for Cloud Services