Long-term archiving: DNA storage on its way to data centers

Synthetic DNA as a storage medium is moving closer to market readiness. The French company Biomemory plans to use its DNA-based storage in data centers. Thanks to the acquisition of technologies from the US company Catalog Technologies, Biomemory aims to offer commercial solutions as early as 2026. DNA storage is intended to represent a sustainable, secure, and long-lasting alternative to conventional media.

The company has developed a patented method for producing biosafety DNA and enzymatic consumables. This is intended to enable the industrial production of DNA storage that can reliably store data for 50 to 150 years. The DNA storage systems will be integrated into rack servers and are intended to serve as an additional storage tier within existing architectures. Through the acquisition of Catalog Technologies, Biomemory gains access to the DNA writer “Shannon,” which is intended to handle DNA storage efficiently and scalably. According to its statements, this approach complements Biomemory's strategy with high-speed and low error rates. Information on storage capacity or read/write speeds of the DNA storage systems is not yet available.

However, Olivier Lauvray, Biomemory's Vice President of Industrialization and Partnerships, warns against excessive expectations: “Our strategy is to deploy devices in data centers, starting with our data center. However, our first step this year (which already represents an important milestone) is to bring the first real commercial offering, a fully qualified end-to-end solution, to market. This solution will be compatible and interoperable with the IT data center environment but will not be deployed as a physical appliance in third-party data centers. […] We still have a lot of work to do for this, as it requires a high degree of automation and numerous stress tests.”

Alternative long-term storage

Like glass storage, DNA storage is among the possible storage media for true long-term archiving; such storage is intended to last not just 30 years like tape, but many hundreds or even thousands of years. DNA storage faces competition from Microsoft with its Project Silica (more on this in the next c't) and Cerabyte with its ceramic storage on a glass disc of the same name. However, the only practical method for data storage lasting more than 10 years remains tape – a tape, with the current LTO version 10, can store at least 40 TByte.

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