How XPNTL Archive works

With staging, new data lands on an SSD you already own first. That is why archiving feels like copying to a local drive. Staging is optional: without it, XPNTL writes straight to tape. Ingest runs at SSD speed, and recent restores come straight back from staging at SSD speed.

Movement to tape happens in the background, on the policy you set. Browsing and searching the catalog never touches a cartridge, so it is instant across the whole archive, including tapes that are not loaded.

To be straight about what is slower: restoring old data that now lives only on tape means loading a cartridge and reading it. That takes minutes, not milliseconds. XPNTL tells you exactly which cartridge holds what before you start, so you are never searching tape by tape.

Every file is hashed when it is ingested. After it is written, XPNTL reads it back from the media and compares it with that hash. Verify-after-write is on by default, and you can run a full or quick verify on demand at any time.

Scheduled re-verification then proves the archive is still readable years later, with a dated readability report for each cartridge. You can hand that report to an auditor.

Immutability without verified readability is a promise. Verification is the evidence.

Once a cartridge is ejected, no software path to it exists. No credential, compromised admin account or malware in your network can reach it, because it is not connected to anything.

That is a different thing from logical isolation, where the data is still on a live system and protected by settings and permissions. XPNTL gives you both: data stays online while you need it, then goes physically out of reach. The catalog keeps offline cartridges searchable, so taking them off the network costs you nothing in findability.

XPNTL writes the open LTFS format, with no proprietary container. Our LTFS implementation is optimized for performance and fully compatible: we read LTFS tapes written by other tools, and other tools read ours.

A file is never split across cartridges. When a tape fills up, the next file starts whole on the next tape. Any single cartridge is independently readable, in any compatible LTO drive, with or without XPNTL.

Set the policy: what gets archived, where it goes, how long it stays on staging and how often it is re-verified. Then nothing. XPNTL handles the media, and XPNTL Sentry, included with every product, watches your drives and staging around the clock and tells you when something needs attention.

When you need something back, search the catalog, pick the files, and restore. Critical data first, if that is what the moment calls for.