At CES 2023, Folio Photonics will unveil an enterprise-class optical data storage solution. Here’s what we know about it so far.
Folio Photonics announced that it will unveil the first-ever enterprise-scale optical disk data storage solution during CES 2023, on January 5-8 in Las Vegas. The new technology is designed to dramatically reduce the initial cost and total cost of ownership of data storage and backup, while making data archives accessible, active, digitally secure and sustainable.
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Currently, companies around the world are massively storing and backing up their data data warehouses in the cloud, data centers, edge centers and on tape and discs. But from power consumption to accessibility, reliability and cost, each storage system has its unique advantages and disadvantages. In this report, we’ll cover the latest release of Folio Photonics and what it could offer those looking for new storage alternatives.
Optical multi-tier business disk storage solution
Folio Photonicsa company focused on data storage innovation will showcase the first enterprise-scale optical data storage system at CES 2023. The company claims to have created a system that transcends traditional disk storage by leveraging breakthrough advancements in materials.
The new Folio Photonics storage system is a licensed technology born out of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and its National Science Foundation Center for Layered Polymeric Systems by Professor Kenneth Singer.
The company explains that the system is a high-capacity optical storage solution with enhanced write/read capabilities. The single Folio disc has the same storage capacity as over 100 DVDs, with a long-term roadmap to 10 TB on a single disc.
“The high cost of storage is unsustainable with explosive data growth, cyber threats that continue to escalate, and data centers that are one of the largest contributors to energy and water consumption and carbon emissions,” said Steven Santamaria, CEO of Folio Photonics. “We look forward to CES and the opportunity to showcase how Folio Photonics has achieved a major breakthrough in multilayer optical storage disk technology that will enable an unprecedented level of cost, security, performance and sustainability benefit.”
The benefits of the latest solution from Folio Photonics
Folio Photonics technology overcomes historical optical limitations to reshape the archival storage trajectory. The company explains that the new drives are designed for data center and hyperscale customers. The system can reduce initial storage and backup costs.
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When the drives are not in use, the technology uses no power, and even when the system is running, the system has minimal climate control requirements, meeting environmental, social, and governance requirements. The company has turned to new fluorescent materials to mitigate interlayer crosstalk problems in traditional reflective optical storage media, such as DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
The storage tiers — 16 or more per disk — are extremely thin, high-density, and random-access capable. Data is written and accessed via a proprietary drive with a new confocal optical pick-up unit that can traverse layers at high rotational speeds.
Planning for the future of data storage
The demand for future-proof data storage hardware systems will continue to rise at the pace of global digital acceleration. Enterprises that want to store and back up systems, architectures and valuable data expect long-life, high-capacity systems that are readily accessible when needed.
But with most current data storage solutions, cloud and data center costs can be unsustainable due to the amount of data that needs to be stored. Therefore, low-cost storage solutions are becoming more and more attractive and in demand.
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Protected from intrusion, coded to resist ransomware and physically resilient, Folio Photonics invests in innovation that reinvents an existing technology to provide solutions to the currently expanding global data storage crisis.
“Using proprietary advancements in materials science, Folio Photonics has developed the first economically viable enterprise-scale optical storage drives with dynamic multi-layer write/read capabilities, which will enable the development of radically low-cost, high-capacity disk storage,” added Santamaria.
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