Optical Jukebox
SAN Recovery - Optical Jukebox
An optical jukebox is a type of storage device that can automatically load and unload optical disks. Because of their automatic robotic-like action, jukeboxes are also called robotic drives or auto-chargers. Jukebox capacities have been increased with the release of the 50GB dual layer Blu-ray (BD) format. The current format allows 35TB of storage from a single 700 disc jukebox.
A jukebox device can have up to 2,000 slots for disks. A picking device traverses the slots and drives. The performance of the jukebox depends on the space between a disk and the picking device. It offers a seek time of 85 milliseconds and transfer rates in the range of 700-Kbit/sec. Seek time and transfer rate can vary depending on the optical technology.
Uses
Jukeboxes are used for high-capacity archive storage environments such as imaging, medical, and video. Data stored through this method can be preserved up to 100 years. This is done using Write Once Read Many (WORM) type disks, so it cannot be erased or modified.
Jukeboxes are also used in hierarchical storage management (HSM). HSM adopts a strategy of moving little used or unused files from fast magnetic storage to optical jukebox devices in a process called migration. Whenever the files are required, they are de-migrated to the magnetic disk.
Jukeboxes typically contain internal SCSI based recordable drives that connect directly to a file server and are managed by third party jukebox management software, which controls the movement of the media within the jukebox.
