Continuing to extend its leadership position in developing products that support the LTFS (Linear Tape File System) format, Cache-A Corporation has built a significant track record with this emerging technology. HBO, Safeway and Offhollywood are among the first companies to deploy Cache-A’s enhanced LTFS technology with their archive appliances.

All of Cache-A’s LTO-5 based products include LTFS capability, including the company’s flagship product — the award-winning Pro-Cache5, the high-performance Power-Cache and the quiet, desktop Prime-Cache5. Cache-A is featuring all of these products at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB 2012) in Las Vegas, NV (Booth SL10508).

LTFS is particularly relevant for media and entertainment companies that need storage solutions that effectively safeguard their content, increase data mobility and share content organization-wide.

Based on open software, LTFS enables users to interchange content across different operating systems, software applications and physical locations. It leverages the economy, robustness, high density and low power of tape with much of the functionality and usability of a hard drive by allowing tape to be accessed through standard file systems.

Cache-A enhances LTFS to overcome the following limitations:

• LTFS has inherent characteristics that can cause long waits when used with file management tools like Windows Explorer or Finder
• With LTFS, restoring more than a few files at a time with Explorer or Finder can be very slow
• LTFS cannot be used by itself in a network or multi-user environments because the open code or “base level” deployment requires that the LTO drive be dedicated to a single computer
• LTFS looks like, but does not behave like random access disk. Due to the inherent linear nature of tape, accesses must occur over all files in the order they were written, potentially causing long delays

Benefits of the Cache-A interface that specifically enhance LTFS include:

• File Manager Utility — File moving that avoids issues with Finder/Explorer
• URL Encoding — Allows archiving of file names with illegal characters
• Networked — Makes LTFS volumes available across a LAN
• Indexed — Every tape is searchable and can have additional metadata for every file, folder and tape
• Easy Formatting of Media — No shell command line is required
• Easy Mount and Unmount — No shell command line and no locked eject due to folders in use
• No Client-side Software — Every computer can instantly work with it

With Cache-A’s implementation of LTFS, the tape both looks and behaves like a disk, and all tape operations are handled transparently in the background by the archive appliance and delivers a solution that is:

• Self-contained: Platform neutral to stand the test of time
• Interchangeable: Easy to distribute and interchange assets
• Extensible: Scalable to meet future needs

As a complete archive solution for digital media professionals, Cache-A appliances simplify operations, improve manageability and meet their long-term data retention requirements. Self-contained, easy to deploy with no assembly or installation required, Cache-A appliances know where every file lives on each tape and organizes restores for efficient linear access. They also allow users to employ hard disk caching for file transfers, which protects them from the latencies and access issues associated with linear tape. In addition, they include full remote support and software updates ensure that users always have the latest LTFS version as well as the latest Cache-A features.

Click for more information about Cache-A’s LTFS-Based Archiving.