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Quantum has taken its StorNext file management system and updated it from top to bottom, making it multi-core processor aware and more scalable so it can handle five times more data than StorNext 4.

The company says workflows in the digital media and entertainment business are becoming more complex, involving bigger files, greater numbers of files, and larger team collaboration efforst. Its StorNext software virtualises files and presents them for use irrespective of whether they are stored on disk as files, on disk as objects or on tape as files. The v5 update makes the whole package much snappier in use, especially with random small file open operations.

Quantum has also added more functionality to StorNext with v5.0 and users now get:-

• Native LTFS (Linear Tape File System) capability as well as Quantum's own ANTF format for data stored on tape.
• IP/NAS, HTTP/REST and SAN interfaces.
• Software optimised for flash and Infiniband. The use of InfiniBand between the MDC (Meta Data Controller) and the data storage lowers latency which good, Quantum says, for large client and I/O-intensive operations. It also makes StorNext better in data analytics and high-performance computing (HPC) scenarios.
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  StorNext 5 appliance family

• Five times more scalability with support for up to five billion files and metadata capable of handling petabyte levels. The metadata journal has been redesigned so that it has multi-threaded access and operates with SSDs.
• Ten times more performance through multi-core-aware code, the use of SSDs, better cache management and lower CPU utilisation. Users should see file creates and delete speed up tenfold, and mall file performance up to 100 per cent better.

Quantum stresses that there is no performance slowdown as the file system grows and ages.

The reporting and management framework has also been updated. Quantum hopes that StorNext use will spread out from its media and entertainment market, where projects often involve large collections of file of different sizes and types, and enable its use to proliferate in other big data market sectors.

StorNext v5.0 software will be available on StorNext hardware by the end of the year, and available as a software-only update in the first half of 2014. ®

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