Preserve What Matters — Forever.

In today’s data-driven world, some information simply cannot be lost. Genomic sequences, national archives, medical imaging, cultural heritage, and proprietary datasets for future AI models must remain intact and accessible not just for years, but for decades — even centuries. Creating a Forever Archive means designing storage that outlasts technology cycles, ensures data integrity across generations, and scales without becoming prohibitively expensive.

This is where Quantum ActiveScale® Cold Storage and the Scalar i7 RAPTOR tape library come together to deliver the most future-proof and cost-effective long-term archive solution available.

The Challenge: Why “Forever” is Hard.

Preserving data over decades introduces unique hurdles:

• Technology obsolescence threatens access as storage formats change.
• Data decay (bit rot) silently corrupts files that aren’t regularly checked.
• At petabyte or exabyte scale, even rare hardware failures can cause catastrophic loss.
• Proprietary formats and cloud lock-in jeopardize future accessibility.
• Costs for storing “cold” data in the cloud are unpredictable and rising.

A Forever Archive requires durability, openness, automation, and cost efficiency at a scale traditional storage simply can’t deliver alone.

ActiveScale: Foundation for the Forever Archive.

ActiveScale is built for long-term data stewardship. It unifies all-flash, spinning disk, and a unique tape-based Cold Storage tier under a single namespace. Data is automatically verified, migrated across generations of storage, and preserved with up to 19 nines of durability using patented erasure coding.

Key benefits include:

• Extreme Durability: ActiveScale Cold Storage uses its patented 2-dimensional Erasure Coding to protect cold data against hardware failures. This Erasure code has been specifically designed to be used with tape. It ensures that each object can be read via a single tape mount, it protects against the simultaneous failure of several tape cartridges and also reduces the read error rate by a factor 100.
  This results in very high durability (up to 19 nines) for data stored on tape.
• Data Integrity: End-to-end data integrity checks protect against bit rot and bit flips.
• Seamless Migration: Data automatically moves across storage hardware generations without downtime or manual intervention.
• Open Access: S3 Glacier-compatible APIs and on-tape formats which are shared with our customers eliminate lock-in.

ActiveScale makes it simple to preserve data for the long haul — efficiently and affordably.

RAPTOR: The Powerhouse Behind the Archive.

While ActiveScale manages the lifecycle and access layer, the Scalar i7 RAPTOR provides the physical backbone for storing massive volumes of cold data. As the industry’s highest-density tape library, RAPTOR offers:

• Up to 60 PB raw capacity in a single rack — 200% more dense than traditional libraries.
• 70% lower operating costs for power, cooling, and floor space.

Together, RAPTOR and LTO-10 technology ensure that exabyte-scale archives remain both affordable and secure.

The Perfect Pair: ActiveScale + RAPTOR.

ActiveScale provides the intelligence and automation required for long-term preservation, while RAPTOR delivers the unmatched density of tape. Combined, they form a Forever Archive platform that:

• Scales seamlessly from terabytes to exabytes.
• Balances access needs across hot, warm, and cold data tiers.
• Provides predictable, low-cost economics without egress fees.
• Ensures your data is not only stored, but preserved, verified, and future-proof.

Real-World Example

The table below shows a real-world example: an ActiveScale Cold Storage system using 2-dimentional erasure coding, based on Scalar i7 RAPTOR, with 100PB of usable capacity. The more traditional multi-copy approach is also included, as a comparison.

This clearly shows the superiority of using 2-dimensional erasure coding: it results in much higher data durability than a multi-copy approach and requires much less tapes to achieve this.

Real-World Impact

• National Archives protect cultural heritage across centuries.
• Scientific & Genomic Research preserves massive datasets for reproducibility and future discovery.
• AI Enterprises retain historical data for future model training.

With Quantum ActiveScale and Scalar i7 RAPTOR, organizations can build a Forever Archive that preserves the past, protects the present, and empowers the future.

Learn more about ActiveScale and Scalar i7 RAPTOR.