Sony Launches Generation 3 PetaSite Optical Disc Archive Library with 66 Percent Greater Capacity and 50 Percent Improvement in Archive Performance Versus Previous Generation

Sony Electronics Inc. announces the launch of Generation 3 (“Gen3”) PetaSite Optical Disc Archive technology, which is now shipping. The high-capacity archival storage solution scales from 165 TB*¹ to 2.9 PB*¹ of immutable optical storage in a standard 42U Rack. This launch follows Sony’s recently announced Gen3 high-capacity USB desktop drive units (ODS-D380U), fibre-channel library drive units (ODS-D380F) and 5.5 TB media cartridges (ODC5500R).

Sony’s enterprise optical disc archive solution provides secure, immutable data preservation for a wide variety of applications and industries, including: corporate IT, state and local governments, surveillance, banking, education and healthcare, among others.

In keeping with Sony’s commitment to its customers and focus on long-term archive solutions, The Gen3 enterprise class eight-channel, dual-sided optical drive is write compatible to Generation 2 and backward read compatible to all Optical Disc Archive cartridges.

“Sony’s latest generation of optical drive technology addresses many issues with long-term storage, particularly with respect to its total cost of ownership,” said Theresa Alesso, Pro Division president, Sony Electronics. “Our new Gen3 system is backward compatible with previous versions of our optical drive components, which eliminates costly data migration projects and allows our customers to focus resources and dollars on other crucial business initiatives. Its low-power consumption also aligns with customers’ initiatives to drive greater storage density at lower operating costs in the data center. We are very excited about these latest improvements to our industry-leading archiving solution.”

The scalable Gen3 PetaSite library family of products includes: the ODS-L30M master unit, ODS-L60E drive and cartridge extension unit, and ODS-L100E cartridge-only extension unit. The master unit serves as the main building block with its 165TB*¹ capacity. The extension unit with drive and cartridges offers 335.5TB*¹ each, and the cartridge-only unit provides 555.5TB*¹ of storage. Up to a maximum of five extension units can attach to the ODS-L30M to make a single 42U library with a maximum of 535 cartridges. Each unit is 7U and includes a 3-slot import/export station to load and unload media. The Gen3 media cartridges each store 5.5TB*¹, with an estimated shelf life of 100 years*³.

Optical Disc Archive Gen3 employs Sony’s Archival Disc (AD) dual-sided media. The Gen3 optical drive reads and writes both sides of the double-sided media to enable an average, read rate of 375 MB/s (3Gbps) and an average verified write rate of 187.5 MB/s (1.5Gbps). This represents a 150 percent improvement in performance over Sony’s Gen2 drive.

Benefits of Sony’s ODA Technology:

• Archival solutions for near-line and cold storage applications
• World-leading optical drive performance: average read rate of 375 MB/s (3Gbps) and average verified write rate of 187.5 MB/s (1.5Gbps)^*2
• Fast random access to data files
• Backward compatibility eliminates need for data migration
• Data integrity is assured using “on the fly” verification combined with highly stable Archival Disc media
• Disc read cycle is rated more than one million times
• 100-plus year media life *³ for cartridge; resistant to EMP (electro-magnetic pulse), temperature and humidity changes
• Write-Once (WORM) archive media – immutable by cyber attacks, malicious or accidental erasure, self-replicating viruses or ransomware

For more information on Sony Electronics’ PetaSite Optical Disc Archive technology, please contact PetaSiteSales@sony.com

*1: Recording capacity depends on the usage environment. Actual recordable capacity may be less than indicated on the cartridge. Formatted capacity is 5.2TB per cartridge.

*2: Performance varies based on cartridge type and client infrastructure.

*3:  Estimated average archival life as an archival bare disc by internal acceleration testing, referred to ISO/IEC16963 method.