Kent Urbaniak

AgStar manages a total of 13TB of corporate data, including customer transaction information, to support its large, data-intensive client base.It outgrew its previous tape library, a STK/Sun/Oracle L40, and wanted to upgrade to a higher capacity library that would provide advanced features including tape media encryption with key management, higher speed and density, and a shorter backup window.

AgStar selected two Spectra T120 tape libraries – one for its data
center in Rochester and… Show more

AgStar manages a total of 13TB of corporate data, including customer transaction information, to support its large, data-intensive client base.It outgrew its previous tape library, a STK/Sun/Oracle L40, and wanted to upgrade to a higher capacity library that would provide advanced features including tape media encryption with key management, higher speed and density, and a shorter backup window.

AgStar selected two Spectra T120 tape libraries – one for its data
center in Rochester and the second for its Mankato, Minnesota
disaster recovery location. Both libraries are configured with LTO-4
drives and media and are used to backup its corporate data and to
allow for future growth. It backs up 2TB of data nightly, from 7:00
pm to 7:00 am. Data is kept onsite for six hours or less, before
being encrypted natively and rotated offsite for disaster recovery.
AgStar relies on Spectra’s AES 256-bit media encryption with
key management feature, which is included with its BlueScale11
management software. Fully integrated and offered at no additional
cost, Spectra’s encryption solution is simple to use and eliminatesthe risk of a data security breaches.

The new library fulfilled Agstar’s higher capacity requirements and
shortened the backup window using LTO-4 drives and media,
which have higher density and faster performance than previous
LTO generations. Show less

Twin Cities Public Television's (tpt) current Spectra T120 tape library was
pushing its capacity thresholds, was configured with older SAIT
drives and tpt needed a higher-density storage solution. As part of
its technology review, tpt considered tape and hard disk systems.
Based on the results of the technology review and their past positive experience with the Spectra T120, tpt upgraded to a Spectra Logic T950 tape library with BlueScale11 software. The Spectra T950 is being used… Show more

Twin Cities Public Television's (tpt) current Spectra T120 tape library was
pushing its capacity thresholds, was configured with older SAIT
drives and tpt needed a higher-density storage solution. As part of
its technology review, tpt considered tape and hard disk systems.
Based on the results of the technology review and their past positive experience with the Spectra T120, tpt upgraded to a Spectra Logic T950 tape library with BlueScale11 software. The Spectra T950 is being used for the nearline storage of all of tpt’s broadcast television programs. Data resides on the Spectra tape library and is transferred to the archive daily, then retrieved as historical programs are needed. tpt is taking advantage of the newly available Global Spare tape drive option in Spectra’s BlueScale11 software.

The Global Spare option enables a spare failover tape drive to be
configured, insuring that all necessary drives are always available
to the MassStor software retrieve and store content in required
time frames. BlueScale11 from Spectra is the only option available
on the market with this high availability feature for tape libraries.


The Spectra T950 that tpt upgraded to can expand to eight
total frames and 10,050 slots, allowing for 30.2PB (compressed)
capacity. In addition to the Global Spare tape drive functionality,
Spectra Logic’s BlueScale 11 software offers proactive drive
and media heath checks with its Library Lifecycle Management
capabilities; high availability; detailed reporting features; proactive
notification and tracking; and ease of use. Show less

Worked with Directors at the University of Minnesota’s Supercomputing Institute for Advanced Computational Research to design and implement Spectra Logic’s T950 tape library to store large quantities of data to support both a National Institute of Health grant project and the University’s collaborative research data on supercomputing within the University and the state of Minnesota.

The system will be partitioned to manage the backup data for nearly 9,000 Minnesota Supercomputing… Show more

Worked with Directors at the University of Minnesota’s Supercomputing Institute for Advanced Computational Research to design and implement Spectra Logic’s T950 tape library to store large quantities of data to support both a National Institute of Health grant project and the University’s collaborative research data on supercomputing within the University and the state of Minnesota.

The system will be partitioned to manage the backup data for nearly 9,000 Minnesota Supercomputing Institute research accounts and can easily scale with added drives, slots and a second frame to accommodate our future data needs. Show less