Disk Archive

Disk Archive provides easy, secure and affordable technology for archiving and cold data storage – ALTO - the “Alternative to LTO”. We created ALTO – a high-density, enterprise-class, offline data archive platform - to provide a convenient and cost effective alternative to cumbersome robotic tape libraries and expensive clustered RAID storage setups. ALTO provides easy and scalable capacity and scalable security thanks to user-defined replication level. Based on fully spun-down disks, ALTO has ultra-low power consumption and triple digit extended disk life. ALTO combines on-line and off-line data storage using individually managed, commodity disks that can be externalized for vault storage and bank-like security. ALTO integrates with best of breed Media Management Applications and is supported by over 30 industry leading Media Management and Archive Management Technology Partners. When business requirements change, ALTO easily expands in increments as small as an individual disk drive for low operational costs. An ALTO based archive can start as a single device at a single location, and grow in scale, security or geographical diversity without limits. ALTO takes advantage the most recent strategies for data protection, with the unique ability to add disks of any capacity from any vendor on an as-needed basis. ALTO scales to 1EiB (1,024PiB), without costly and time-consuming migration, presenting a truly future-proof answer for growing storage demands. Our disk management software Prometheus allows idle disks to be stopped, saving power and providing “Century-class” data life. The data stored in ALTO may be additionally secured by transparent encryption, with options for secure bulk end-of-life erasure. Unlike data tape, an ALTO archive based on Helium filled disks is totally immune to atmospheric humidity and pollutants, allowing operation in hostile locations and no-go situations.