Intelligent Cold Store: Keep Your Data Fresh On Demand
In the media world, content does not like to be deleted. Whether the focus is news broadcasting, prime time entertainment or live sports production, media broadcasters and production companies simply do not want to delete their assets. There is always a high potential that older footage will need to be repurposed. A forgotten news clip might suddenly provide crucial historical context for a breaking story. A sports highlight from a decade ago could become the anchor for a new feature length documentary.
Industry analysis of data archiving consistently supports the Pareto principle regarding asset retrievals. Storage analysts observe that an 80 to 20 ratio typically applies to media libraries, meaning 80 percent of stored data will sit unaccessed over a given year, while the vast majority of retrieval activity focuses entirely on a 20 percent subset of active files. The fundamental challenge is that it is completely impossible to predict which 20 percent will be needed next. Therefore, the only viable operational strategy is to keep everything.
However, keeping everything must be achieved cost effectively. This requires a dedicated intelligence layer, which is exactly what makes an intelligent cold store function. The intelligence layer ensures every single file remains fully indexed and instantly searchable even when the physical storage media is offline. Disk Archive works seamlessly with a huge range of Media Asset Management and Production Asset Management systems to facilitate this exact requirement. Users can search and locate files instantly, ensuring they can always find what they need without delay.
What actually makes this storage "cold" is the physical state of the hardware. In a standard nearline array, disks spin continuously, consuming power and generating heat. The ALTO platform takes a different approach by keeping idle disks completely spun down. Drives are only spun up on demand when a specific file retrieval is requested. This spin down technology drastically reduces both power consumption and the mechanical wear on the drives. It provides the financial and environmental benefits of a deep archive while the intelligence layer ensures the media remains highly accessible.
Archiving for the long term requires strict adherence to best practices for digital preservation. This means demanding open standards and completely avoiding hardware or software lock in. Content must be written in a manner that ensures retrievals can actually be performed independent of the ALTO system in a worst case scenario. You should never allow a vendor to hold your data hostage through proprietary formats or forced encryption keys. By utilising standard file systems, your media always remains accessible and firmly under your control, providing a true Alternative to LTO tape.
The environmental impact of data storage is under intense scrutiny, and ALTO offers outstanding green credentials by ensuring disks only spin up on demand. This approach drastically reduces the need for intensive ambient cooling. The total cost of ownership is highly compelling when compared to LTO tape libraries and public cloud storage platforms over a standard 5 year analysis. The longevity of the system is equally impressive. Existing ALTO platforms are still in active daily operation after more than 15 years, still running on their original disks with no forced data migration cycles required.
Disk Archive is not a disk manufacturer. This independence allows our clients to take full advantage of a wide range of different disk manufacturers. As market prices drop and drive capacities evolve over time, you can seamlessly mix these new drives into your existing equation. This unique architectural freedom makes it incredibly easy to scale your archive to multiple petabytes while maintaining a highly compact small form factor.
Modern archives must also withstand increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. ALTO provides complete protection against ransomware and malicious digital attacks. The system allows administrators to easily create second or third copies of their data. You can then externalise these disks by removing them and storing them in secure physical vaults. Because the idle disks remaining in the chassis are powered down, they are electrically isolated from the network. This ensures your most valuable digital assets are fully protected at all times.
