QStar has recently launched its Global ArchiveSpace, which offers access to a vast number of tape drives in archives that can scale to exabytes. This service is aimed at providing access to infrequently accessed data for AI, HPC workloads, and hyperscaler cold storage. QStar has been in the industry since 1987, specializing in archiving and tape products. Their offerings include QStar Archive Manager, Tape as NAS, Tape as Cloud, and Cloud gateway. With a global namespace, Global ArchiveSpace provides a single site, multi-node tape architecture that can scale-out to exabytes and offers multi-tenant access. Users can access Global ArchiveSpace through SMB/NFS or S3 via Windows or Linux commodity servers. QStar also provides a single namespace of tape storage that can potentially reach exabytes in capacity. Data can be replicated to another tape library, hyperscaler clouds, or private S3 storage during ingestion. QStar uses its own proprietary file system and utilizes LTFS as an access mechanism. Cohesity, Hammerspace, Rubrik, and Hycu are among the companies that use this service as a target. Tape storage is still relevant because it is secure, sustainable, and cost-effective compared to disk storage. An LTO-9 tape cartridge can hold 45TB of data, with high throughput and greater areal density than HDDs. Additionally, tape media produces significantly less CO2 per terabyte compared to HDDs. According to IDC, tape costs eight times less than disk over a 10-year period for 10PB.
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