Tape Ark is an AWS Select Tier Services and Software Partner, and member of the Amazon Partner Network (APN).
Born by Amazon’s innate desire to scale its own services with industry-shifting technology, AWS was the first to market with a modern cloud infrastructure service.
Tape Ark and AWS share the same belief about ‘Customer Obsession’, starting conversations by looking to truly understand customers’ needs first, in order to position data ready for ease of integration.
Tape Ark’s solutions are now available on the AWS Marketplace.
Click here to visit AWS Marketplace to purchase.
Some of the benefits enjoyed by AWS customers through Tape Ark include:
- Ultra-low-cost archive storage.
- The only public cloud vendor offering an inbuilt Virtual Tape Library (VTL) infrastructure.
- Once your data is in the cloud, AWS is regarded as having the most comprehensive suite of cloud services, allowing you to extract great utility and value from your data.
- Vast global infrastructure to support data sovereignty.
- Highly durable and redundant storage.
Whether you’re already connecting with an AWS Account Manager or leading your own inquiry, we’re here to help you.
The Tape Ark Mass Tape Ingest Service
The Tape Ark mass tape ingest service is done using a standard operating process that has seen millions of tapes processed successfully. The process involves a multistage ingest system that is secure, resilient, and can perform at scale. The typical workflow for a client is as follows:
- Send your tapes to Tape Ark for a comprehensive media audit. The media audit will be done to provide the customer with the following:
- The number of tapes in the collection
- The types of tapes in the collection
- The expected cloud footprint of the data once liberated to help clients determine their cloud footprint in advance.
- The risk categories that exist in their media collection are based on age, brand, and rarity of the media types and more.
- The audit includes photographs of each tape to preserve all label information, and so that Tape Ark can use the photographs in its automatic tape identification AI system to assist in the audit.
- After acceptance of the ingest parameters, Tape Ark commences the ingest using AWS IoT core to control its mass tape ingest platform ArkBridge.
- The ArkBridge platform allows tape drives to be managed from a single interface from anywhere in the world, allowing for the Tape Ark service to be carried out in complex or remote locations.
- If the tapes are in a remote location or being ingested onsite for a customer, then the AWS [TapeBall] can be used to transfer tapes to AWS directly from the client’s data center without shipping tapes.
- Tape Ark also generates MD5 or SHA1 hash values for each tape file to be used to ensure that the data is an exact duplicate of what was received by Tape Ark and what was uploaded to AWS by Tape Ark remains identical and unaltered.
- The data is then positioned in the customer account in the AWS VTL, and connected to the customers on-premises backup and restore application through iSCSI so that customers can now access all of their data from one location. No more tapes, no more offsite storage, no more waiting for data.
- The tapes can then be securely disposed of or returned if the client wishes to retain them.
The above tape ingest process has been successfully used by banks, insurance companies, major broadcasters, and government bodies alike.
Industry Spotlight: Media and Entertainment
For Media and Entertainment and Broadcast companies, migrating their content from aging tape hardware to a digital platform like the AWS Cloud opens up compelling opportunities for how they can put that content to work. We believe that you don’t really own an asset if you can’t access it whenever you want, or if it’s not available to modern tools and applications. Bringing their collections up to date with the times spares them the feeling of being stuck in the past and equips them to move forward with purpose into a future where streaming is key.
Below are some resources that we’ve compiled to show why these projects are a must for the industry.
Media and Entertainment Customer Stories:
https://www.tapeark.com/media-and-entertainment-customer-migrates-their-content-to-aws/
https://www.tapeark.com/tape-ark-helps-television-broadcasting-group-to-transition-to-aws/
Tape-to-AWS Bucket: a step-by-step guide
Part 1: https://www.tapeark.com/media-and-entertainment-and-broadcast-tape-to-bucket/
Part 3: https://www.tapeark.com/media-and-entertainment-and-broadcast-ai-and-mam-integration/
