Originally created by Mountaingate for SGI's IRIX workstations and for Windows, and then bought by ADIC itself by Quantum, the StorNext distributed file system will soon be celebrating its 20th anniversary. It was in 1997 that this software storage system debuted on the market.
The latest version of the file system, version 5.4 was unveiled in mid-December by Quantum. As usual, it is available in software form and on the manufacturer's own storage appliances (Xcellis range).
A filesystem designed for large storage environments
StorNext has earned an important reputation in the media and multimedia storage space where it is widely used (movie studios, TV channels, video production and post-production, animation). But because of its high performance and its ability to handle very large amounts of data, StorNext has also gradually established itself in other sectors that consume a lot of storage resources, such as the healthcare and research markets. genomics, sports, petroleum research, space and video surveillance. In France, several customers manage dozens of petabytes with StorNext including the Canal + group.
The latest version of the file system, version 5.4 was unveiled in mid-December by Quantum. As usual, it is available in software form and on the manufacturer's own storage appliances (Xcellis range).
A filesystem designed for large storage environments
StorNext has earned an important reputation in the media and multimedia storage space where it is widely used (movie studios, TV channels, video production and post-production, animation). But because of its high performance and its ability to handle very large amounts of data, StorNext has also gradually established itself in other sectors that consume a lot of storage resources, such as the healthcare and research markets. genomics, sports, petroleum research, space and video surveillance. In France, several customers manage dozens of petabytes with StorNext including the Canal + group.
Airbus Defense and Space, meanwhile,
With version 5 , Quantum has overhauled the file system to take advantage of the multi-core capabilities of modern processors and modern fast storage media such as SSDs. Quantum also tackled fragmentation issues that caused system performance to deteriorate over time with previous versions and worked on StorNext 5 performance with smaller files (less than 1 MB in size).
Historically very linked to the Fiber Channel world, StorNext has also evolved to adapt to other interconnection technologies. StorNext 5 has thus brought a better integration to the Ethernet / IP world with access in NAS mode via gateways, but also the support of HTTP / Rest interfaces with Lattus (the object appliances of the brand, derived from the Amplidata technology). Version 5.4, recently launched, added support for Infiniband.
Ability to manage multiple classes of service and storage media
Quantum also continues to highlight its ability to manage data prioritization, including tape outsourcing for archiving. With StorNext Storage Manager, StorNext can export data to tape libraries using the LTFS file system, as well as its own ANTF file system. The latter makes it possible, in particular, to manage the bursting of a massive file between several cartridges (which LTFS does not know how to do). It also offers better performance.
Version 5.4 of StorNext also added support for object storage services in the cloud as a storage medium. In this release, StorNext is able to manage tiering of data to Amazon AWS S3 or Microsoft Azure, but also to object storage systems such as Scality Ring , IBM Cloud Object Storage or NetApp StorageGrid. For this type of usage, Quantum charges $ 50 per TB per year for data management in the public cloud and $ 100 per TB per year for data placed on a private object storage.
With version 5 , Quantum has overhauled the file system to take advantage of the multi-core capabilities of modern processors and modern fast storage media such as SSDs. Quantum also tackled fragmentation issues that caused system performance to deteriorate over time with previous versions and worked on StorNext 5 performance with smaller files (less than 1 MB in size).
Historically very linked to the Fiber Channel world, StorNext has also evolved to adapt to other interconnection technologies. StorNext 5 has thus brought a better integration to the Ethernet / IP world with access in NAS mode via gateways, but also the support of HTTP / Rest interfaces with Lattus (the object appliances of the brand, derived from the Amplidata technology). Version 5.4, recently launched, added support for Infiniband.
Ability to manage multiple classes of service and storage media
Quantum also continues to highlight its ability to manage data prioritization, including tape outsourcing for archiving. With StorNext Storage Manager, StorNext can export data to tape libraries using the LTFS file system, as well as its own ANTF file system. The latter makes it possible, in particular, to manage the bursting of a massive file between several cartridges (which LTFS does not know how to do). It also offers better performance.
Version 5.4 of StorNext also added support for object storage services in the cloud as a storage medium. In this release, StorNext is able to manage tiering of data to Amazon AWS S3 or Microsoft Azure, but also to object storage systems such as Scality Ring , IBM Cloud Object Storage or NetApp StorageGrid. For this type of usage, Quantum charges $ 50 per TB per year for data management in the public cloud and $ 100 per TB per year for data placed on a private object storage.