Quantum expanded its storage portfolio with new classification, management, and protection capabilities to tackle what it believes to be the biggest challenge enterprises are facing: unstructured data.  

New ways to automate data placement on native non-volatile memory express (NVMe) for high-throughput, low latency workloads have been added to Quantum’s high-performance file system, StorNext 7. And an expanded ActiveScale object storage line features a smaller capacity three node object storage system, along with new features such as object lock to protect critical data.

The update also introduces Quantum All-Terrain File Storage (ATFS), a network-attached storage (NAS)-based software folded into a file system that can scale billions of files and petabytes (PB) of erasure-coded storage, meaning it can extend file storage to the cloud. The company calls it a “next generation software platform for ‘any terrain.’”

This marks the end of the first phase of transition for the San Jose, California-based storage vendor as it moves beyond its backup tape roots to file and object storage, NVMe-based storage technology, and services to meet the growing requirement for archiving “forever data.” Quantum also recently moved out of the “niche” category and into the “challengers” quadrant of Gartner’s latest distributed files systems and objects Magic Quadrant report. 

Quantum is no stranger to enriching massive datasets. It’s well positioned in the media and entertainment industry where its offerings can store and archive vast amounts of footage for 100 years and beyond. Heavy video and image type files have historically been limited to the media and entertainment industry as a means to preserve cultural artifacts, including the original version of "Star Wars" or the first Olympics to be broadcast in 1936. 

At least until now. Internet-connected machines and devices, such as video cameras and data logging in connected cars and surveillance cameras, have organizations outside of media and entertainment not only generating larger file sizes and file streams, but driving demand for data storage systems with the performance capabilities to store and work with those heavy files, Eric Bassier, senior director of global product marketing at Quantum, explained. 

In some cases, organizations are producing massive volumes of unstructured data at the rate of terabytes (TB) per day, Bassier said. And over the next five years Gartner expects the amount of unstructured data to triple.

This, Bassier said, has ”enterprises in all industries waking up to a massive explosion of unstructured file data, and they're realizing that they need to rethink their infrastructure.”  Furthermore, the shift to more remote work has “exacerbated the need for better visibility and management,” he said.

And that’s what Quantum has set out to solve, Bassier said. “Our vision and our mission is to lead in video, and unstructured data solutions from a storage landscape perspective."

AFTS bears the fruit of Quantum’s April acquisition of Atavium, a small storage and data workflow software startup with a metadata-rich file system that combines real-time search and analytics with a data orchestration engine to provide workflow automation, hybrid multi-cloud collaboration, and policy-based data placement. It uses so-called “zero-touch data classification” to mark files as they pass through workflow stages. ATFS is designed to manage hardware resources as a service when and where the application needs it, according to Bassier.

Once files are ingested, they are immediately tagged, unlocking data classification, data management, and data storage into a single platform, he explained. Users can then visualize data in virtual file system views for collaboration across users and organizations without duplicating copies or loosening data security, according to Quantum.

ATFS is currently sold on Quantum hardware, however, the company plans to soon allow customers to run ATFS software on any infrastructure, according to Bassier.

Now in its seventh iteration, the StorNext file system is a senior service in the Quantum storage family that the company says can deliver full data lifecycle management. The system is a point of ingest where, once files are stored, Quantum can move files to low-cost tape, an object store, the cloud, or other Quantum products like ATFS. 

StorNext 7 is best suited for “extreme performance,” Bassier said, distinguishing its role from ATFS. StorNext caters to largely sequential workloads, where ATFS is best suited for customers with lower throughput sequential needs, but still require data classification and management.

Quantum positions ActiveScale object storage as a go-between, a storage repository below StorNext and ATFS. The company added object storage to its portfolio earlier this year when it acquired ActiveScale, which provides the technology in a software-defined framework, from Western Digital. 

ActiveScale has also been updated with a feature called Object Lock, which can make objects undeletable and unmodifiable for a specified time period and beefs up protection against ransomware. The system can be partitioned into buckets and different protection policies may be applied to align with security requirements, according to Quantum.