Data Storage Tape Update V2014, Its Still Alive

Today the Tape Storage Council issued its  annual memo to highlight the current trends, usages and technology  innovations occurring within the tape storage industry. The Tape Storage  Council includes representatives of BDT, Crossroads Systems, FUJIFILM, HP,  IBM, Imation, Iron Mountain, Oracle, Overland Storage, Qualstar, Quantum, REB  Storage Systems, Recall, Spectra Logic, Tandberg Data and  XpresspaX. 
 
  Data Growth and Technology Innovations Fuel  Tape’s Future
  Tape Addresses New Markets as Capacity,  Performance, and Functionality Reach New Levels

Abstract
  For the past  decade, the tape industry has been re-architecting itself and the renaissance  is well underway. Several  new and important technologies for both LTO (Linear Tape Open) and  enterprise tape products have yielded unprecedented cartridge capacity  increases, much longer media life, improved bit error rates, and vastly  superior economics compared to any previous tape or disk technology. This  progress has enabled tape to effectively address many new data intensive market  opportunities in addition to its traditional role as a backup device such as  archive, Big Data, compliance, entertainment and surveillance. Clearly disk  technology has been advancing, but the progress in tape has been even greater  over the past 10 years. Today’s modern tape technology is nothing like the tape  of the past.

The  Growth in Tape 
  Demand for  tape is being fueled by unrelenting data growth, significant technological  advancements, tape’s highly favorable economics, the growing requirements to  maintain access to data “forever” emanating from regulatory, compliance or  governance requirements, and the big data demand for large amounts of data to  be analyzed and monetized in the future. The  Digital Universe study suggests that the world’s information is doubling  every two years and much of this data is most cost-effectively stored on tape.

Enterprise  tape has reached an unprecedented 10 TB native capacity with data rates  reaching 360 MB/sec. Enterprise tape libraries can scale beyond one exabyte.  Enterprise tape manufacturers IBM and Oracle StorageTek have signaled future  cartridge capacities far beyond 10 TBs with no limitations in sight.  Open  systems users can now store more than 300 Blu-ray quality movies with the LTO-6  2.5 TB cartridge. In the future, an LTO-10 cartridge will hold over 14,400  Blu-ray movies. Nearly 250 million LTO tape cartridges have been shipped since  the format’s inception. This equals over 100,000 PB of data protected and  retained using LTO Technology. The innovative active archive solution combining tape  with low-cost NAS storage and LTFS is gaining momentum for open systems users.

Recent  Announcements and Milestones
  Tape storage  is addressing many new applications in today’s modern data centers while  offering welcome relief from constant IT budget pressures. Tape is also  extending its reach to the cloud as a cost-effective deep archive service. In  addition, numerous analyst studies confirm the TCO for tape is much lower than  disk when it comes to backup and data  archiving applications. See TCO Studies section below.

• On       Sept. 16, 2013 Oracle       Corp announced the StorageTek T10000D enterprise tape drive. Features       of the T10000D include an 8.5 TB native capacity and data rate of 252 MB/s       native. The T10000D is backward read compatible with all three previous       generations of T10000 tape drives.
• On       Jan. 16, 2014 Fujifilm       Recording Media USA, Inc. reported it has manufactured over 100       million LTO Ultrium data cartridges since its release of the first       generation of LTO in 2000. This       equates to over 53 thousand petabytes (53 exabytes) of storage and more       than 41 million miles of tape, enough to wrap around the       globe 1,653 times.
• April       30, 2014, Sony       Corporation independently developed a soft magnetic under layer with a       smooth interface using sputter deposition, created a nano-grained magnetic       layer with fine magnetic particles and uniform crystalline orientation.       This layer enabled Sony to successfully demonstrate the world's highest       areal recording density for tape storage media of 148 GB/in2.       This areal density would make it possible to record more than 185 TB of       data per data cartridge.
• On       May 19, 2014 Fujifilm in conjunction with IBM successfully demonstrated a       record areal data density of 85.9 Gb/in2 on linear magnetic       particulate tape using Fujifilm’s proprietary NANOCUBIC™ and Barium Ferrite (BaFe) particle technologies. This breakthrough in recording density equates to a       standard LTO cartridge capable of storing up to 154 terabytes of       uncompressed data, making it 62 times greater than today’s current LTO-6       cartridge capacity and projects a long and promising future for tape       growth.
• On       Sept. 9, 2014 IBM announced LTFS       LE version 2.1.4 4 extending LTFS (Linear Tape File System) tape       library support.
• On       Sept. 10, 2014 the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), HP,       IBM and Quantum, announced an extended roadmap which now includes LTO generations 9       and 10. The new generation guidelines call for compressed capacities of       62.5 TB for LTO-9 and 120 TB for generation LTO-10 and include compressed       transfer rates of up to 1,770 MB/second for LTO-9 and a 2,750 MB/second       for LTO-10. Each new generation will include read-and-write backwards compatibility       with the prior generation as well as read compatibility with cartridges       from two generations prior to protect investments and ease tape conversion       and implementation.
• On       Oct. 6, 2014 IBM announced the TS1150 enterprise drive. Features of the TS1150 include a       native data rate of up to 360 MB/sec versus the 250 MB/sec native data       rate of the predecessor TS1140 and a native cartridge capacity of 10 TB       compared to 4 TB on the TS1140. LTFS support was included.
• On       Nov. 6, 2014, HP announced a new       release of StoreOpen Automation that delivers a solution for using LTFS in automation environments with       Windows OS, available as a free download. This version complements their       already existing support for Mac and Linux versions to help simplify       integration of tape libraries to archiving solutions.

Significant  Technology Innovations Fuel Tape’s Future
  Development  and manufacturing investment in tape library, drive, media and management  software has effectively addressed the constant demand for improved  reliability, higher capacity, power efficiency, ease of use and the lowest cost  per GB of any storage solution. Below is a summary of tape’s value proposition  followed by key metrics for each:

• Tape       drive reliability has surpassed disk drive reliability
• Tape       cartridge capacity (native) growth is on an unprecedented trajectory
• Tape       has a faster device data rate than disk
• Tape       has a much longer media life than any other digital storage medium
• Tape’s       functionality and ease of use is now greatly enhanced with LTFS
• Tape       requires significantly less energy consumption than any other digital       storage technology
• Tape       storage has  a much lower acquisition cost and TCO than disk

Reliability. Tape reliability  levels have surpassed HDDs. Reliability levels for tape exceeds that of the  most reliable disk drives by one to three orders of magnitude. The BER (Bit  Error Rate - bits read per hard error) for enterprise tape is rated at 1x1019  and 1x1017 for LTO tape. This compares to 1x1016 for the  most reliable enterprise Fibre Channel disk drive.
  

Capacity  and Data Rate. LTO-6 cartridges provide 2.5 TB capacity and more than double the compressed  capacity of the preceding LTO-5 drive with a 14% data rate performance boost to  160 MB/sec. Enterprise tape has reached 8.5 TB native capacity and 252 MB/sec  on the Oracle StorageTek T10000D and 10 TB native capacity and 360 MB/sec on the  IBM TS1150. Tape cartridge capacities are expected to grow at unprecedented  rates for the foreseeable future.
  

Media  Life. Manufacturers specifications indicate that enterprise and LTO tape media has a  life span of 30 years or more while the average tape drive will be deployed 7  to 10 years before replacement. By comparison, the average disk drive is  operational 3 to 5 years before replacement.
  

LTFS  Changes Rules for Tape Access. Compared to previous proprietary solutions,  LTFS is an open tape format that stores files in application-independent,  self-describing fashion, enabling the simple interchange of content across  multiple platforms and workflows. LTFS is also being deployed in several  innovative “Tape as NAS” active archive solutions that combine the cost  benefits of tape with the ease of use and fast access times of NAS. The SNIA  LTFS Technical Working Group has been formed to broaden cross–industry  collaboration and continued technical development of the LTFS specification.

TCOStudies. Tape’s widening cost  advantage compared to other storage mediums makes it the most cost-effective  technology for long-term data retention. The favorable economics (TCO, low  energy consumption, reduced raised floor) and massive scalability have made  tape the preferred medium for managing vast volumes of data. Several tape TCO  studies are publicly available and the results consistently confirm a  significant TCO advantage for tape compared to disk solutions.

According to  the Brad Johns Consulting Group, a TCO study for an LTFS-based ‘Tape as NAS’  solution totaled $1.1M compared with $7.0M for a disk-based unified storage  solution.  This equates to a savings of over $5.9M over a 10-year period,  which is more than 84 percent less than the equivalent amount for a storage  system built on a 4 TB hard disk drive unified storage system.  From a  slightly different perspective, this is a TCO savings of over $2,900/TB of  data. Source: Johns, B. “A New Approach to Lowering the Cost of Storing File  Archive Information,”.

Another  comprehensive TCO study by ESG (Enterprise Strategies Group) comparing an LTO-5  tape library system with a low-cost SATA disk system for backup using  de-duplication (best case for disk) shows that disk deduplication has a 2-4x  higher TCO than the tape system for backup over a 5 year period. The study  revealed that disk has a TCO of 15x higher than tape for long-term data  archiving.

Select  Case Studies Highlight Tape and Active Archive Solutions
  CyArk Is  a non-profit foundation focused on the digital preservation of cultural  heritage sites including places such as Mt. Rushmore, and Pompeii. CyArk  predicted that their data archive would grow by 30 percent each year for the  foreseeable future reaching one to two petabytes in five years. They needed a  storage solution that was secure, scalable, and more cost-effective to provide  the longevity required for these important historical assets. To meet this  challenge CyArk implemented an active archive solution featuring LTO and LTFS  technologies.

Dream  Works Animation a global Computer Graphic (CG) animation studio has  implemented a reliable, cost-effective and scalable active archive solution to  safeguard a 2 PB portfolio of finished movies and graphics, supporting a  long-term asset preservation strategy. The studio’s comprehensive, tiered and  converged active archive architecture, which spans software, disk and tape,  saves the company time, money and reduces risk.

LA Kings of the  NHL rely extensively on digital video assets for marketing activities with team  partners and for its broadcast affiliation with Fox Sports. Today, the Kings  save about 200 GB of video per game for an 82 game regular season and are on  pace to generate about 32-35 TB of new data per season. The King’s chose to  implement Fujifilm’s  Dternity NAS active archive appliance, an open LTFS based architecture. The  Kings wanted an open source archiving solution which could outlast its original  hardware while maintaining data integrity. Today with Dternity and LTFS, the  Kings don’t have to decide what data to keep because they are able to  cost-effectively save everything they might need in the future.

McDonald’s primary challenge was to create a digital video workflow that streamlines the  management and distribution of their global video assets for their video  production and post-production environment. McDonald’s implemented the Spectra T200 tape library with LTO-6  providing 250 TB of McDonald’s video production storage. Nightly, incremental  backup jobs store their media assets into separate disk and LTO- 6 storage  pools for easy backup, tracking and fast retrieval. This system design allows  McDonald’s to effectively separate and manage their assets through the use of  customized automation and data service policies.

NCSA employs  an Active Archive solution providing 100 percent of the nearline storage for  the NCSA Blue Waters supercomputer, which is one of the world’s largest active file repositories  stored on high capacity, highly reliable enterprise tape media. Using an active  archive system along with enterprise tape and RAIT (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Tape) eliminates the need to duplicate tape  data, which has led to dramatic cost savings.

Queensland  Brain Institute (QBI) is a leading center for neuroscience research.   QBI’s research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate  brain function to help develop new treatments for neurological and mental  disorders.  QBI’s storage system has to scale extensively to store,  protect, and access tens of terabytes of data daily to support cutting-edge  research.  QBI choose an Oracle solution consisting of Oracle’s StorageTek  SL3000 modular tape libraries with StorageTek T10000 enterprise tape  drives.   The Oracle solution improved QBI’s ability to grow, attract  world-leading scientists and meet stringent funding conditions.

Looking  Ahead to 2015 and Beyond
  The role tape  serves in today’s modern data centers is expanding as IT executives and cloud  service providers address new applications for tape that leverage its  significant operational and cost advantages. This recognition is driving  investment in new tape technologies and innovations with extended roadmaps, and  it is expanding tape’s profile from its historical role in data backup to one  that includes long-term archiving requiring cost-effective access to enormous  quantities of stored data. Given the current and future trajectory of tape  technology, data intensive markets such as big data, broadcast and  entertainment, archive, scientific research, oil and gas exploration,  surveillance, cloud, and HPC are expected to become significant beneficiaries  of tape’s continued progress. Clearly the tremendous innovation, compelling  value proposition and development activities demonstrate tape technology is not  sitting still; expect this promising trend to continue in 2015 and  beyond.

Visit the Tape  Storage Council at tapestorage.org