Panasonic collaborates with Facebook on data storage

We’re excited to introduce the new blu-ray optical disc-based data archive system we developed in collaboration with Facebook. By collaborating with Facebook, Panasonic was able to design blu-ray to meet the growing demand for more efficient and sustainable ways to store and access cold data (infrequently or never accessed data stored for the long term) in the world’s data centres.

The blu-ray solution reduces data centre operating costs and energy use, while maintaining strong data integrity thanks to the special characteristics of optical discs, including their longevity, immutability, backward compatibility, low power consumption and tolerance to environmental changes.

Panasonic and Blu-ray

Panasonic’s main contribution to the effort was its high-density optical technology, key devices (optical discs, drives and related robotics) and library software to control the system easily in the data centre.

“Panasonic is delighted by the opportunity to collaborate with Facebook, with its strong position and influence in the data storage market and expertise necessary to develop the optical data archiver in validation with actual data centre environments. With this data archiver, we expect the industry will be able to enjoy the benefits of the optical technology that Panasonic has been refining over the past 30 years both in the consumer market and B2B applications.” –Yasuji Enokido, President of Panasonic’s AVC Networks Company

Facebook and Blu-ray

Facebook collaborated by providing its unmatched expertise in designing, deploying, managing and servicing storage systems in data centres. In addition, Facebook provided extensive technical and real-world data centre feedback at every stage of the development.

“As Facebook continues to grow, we needed to address some of our fundamental engineering challenges with an efficient, low-cost and sustainable solution that matches our speed and exabyte-scale of data. We’re seeing exponential growth in the number of photos and videos being uploaded to Facebook, and the work we’ve done with Panasonic is exciting because optical storage introduces a medium that is immutable, which helps ensure that people have long-term access to their digital memories.” –Jason Taylor, PhD, VP of Infrastructure, Facebook