READY OR NOT ….. HERE COMES LTO-5 TAPE TECHNOLOGY

[Anonymous]

http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid187_gci1355225,00.html
Here comes LTO-5 tape technology, ready or not
If
tape backup and recovery technology has failed to live up to repeated
predictions of its imminent demise, one of the reasons must surely be
the LTO Consortium. Over a period of about 10 years, the LTO Ultrium
format, developed and supported by technology providers including
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co., IBM Corp. and Quantum Corp. (and their
predecessors) has brought to market four generations of high-capacity
tape storage products with a carefully laid out, six-generation roadmap
for growth and scalability.

LTO-4, the current generation of
tape, provides up to 1.6 TB of capacity per cartridge and transfer
rates of up to 240 MBps (assuming 2:1 compression). The format has also
been made to provide for write once, read many (WORM) functionality to
help address regulatory compliance needs along with tape drive
level-based encryption to strengthen security.
Now, with a slow
economy and adoption of LTO-4 by no means complete, the LTO Consortium
is gearing up to offer LTO-5, probably early in 2010, with a capacity
likely to be in the range of 3.2 TB and data transfer rates of up to
360 MBps (in both cases, assuming a 2:1 compression ratio).

Who needs LTO-5?
But
is the market ready and does anyone really need that kind of
capability? William R. Qualls, director of magnetic tape at Imation
Corp., says yes. In his view, higher capacity gives organizations a
chance to keep the same physical footprint while keeping up with the
doubling of data that happens every two years, on average.

However,
Robert Amatruda, an analyst at IDC, is more cautious. He said in the
big picture, LTO is on a roll. “It has been tremendous,” he said.
However, he added, the tape market doesn’t lend itself to quick
transitions. “It isn’t like the hard drive world where you are in and
out of a technology generation in 18 months — with tape, it is more
like 36 or more months before the current generation fully matures,” he
said.Indeed, he said, all of the LTO vendors are grappling with that
fact and the reality that the current economy is adding “staying power”
to existing LTO deployments.

While somewhat more optimistic,
Robert Sims at Crossroads, a storage solutions vendor, acknowledges the
challenges. He pointed out that LTO-2 came out on schedule and while
there was an effort to get quick adoption, not everyone did, or at
least not as quickly as the vendors had planned or wanted. That trend
continued significantly in LTO-4. In fact, he noted, there are a lot of
companies that have only recently moved to LTO-3.”We have some
customers who are thinking of skipping LTO-4 entirely, and others say
LTO-2 is meeting all their needs and they aren’t sure they will ever
go,” he said. And with tight capital expenditure budgets, “People
aren’t throwing this technology away — I think the roadmaps showing
continued performance gains and doubling of capacity aren’t necessarily
what the market wants,” he added. On the other hand, LTO-4’s new
encryption capabilities, which LTO-5 is expected to continue, did help
some companies to justify an upgrade.

Of course, for better or
worse, LTO has maintained and is expected to continue to support
orderly transitions rather than “big-bang” changes. For instance, LTO-4
format supports backwards-compatible read-and-write capability with LTO
generation 3 cartridges and backward read capabilities with LTO
generation 2 cartridges. That same kind of backward compatibility is
expected to continue with LTO-5.”It isn’t like the hard drive world
where you are in and out of a technology generation in 18 months —
with tape, it is more like 36 or more months before the current
generation fully matures.Robert Amatruda analyst, IDC
                
 Others
in the vendor community are far more bullish, though. For instance,
John Zammett, president of HorizonTek Inc., in Huntington NY, a storage
and backup solutions provider offering said, “LTO-5 is a no brainer.”
In his view, although the media is likely to be more expensive, it is
less expensive overall than even LTO-3 because the price-to-capacity
ratio is more favorable. “So it is not a matter of trying to force a
high-tech sales on people. On the low end, people may not need the
throughput or capacity, but it makes sense because of the overall cost
of media and in large environments it makes sense because it handles
large amounts of data so well.”

Bob Covey, vice president of
marketing at Qualstar Corp., a tape system vendor, is equally bullish.
“In the market I think there is always room for more capacity,” he
said. “Every time capacity goes up, the cost per gigabyte goes down.
There are clearly customers who have such enormous requirements that
capacity is a big factor. We have customers on LTO-3 that will upgrade
straight to LTO-5, and a number of them have already expressed strong
interest in it.”

More organizations are using tape for archiving
Furthermore,
Covey noted, LTO makes upgrades easy. “Every one of the previous [LTO]
upgrades has been completely painless. Every library we have handled
since LTO-1 has accepted the modification without any changes other
than firmware.”

Then, looking at the issue strategically, he
said many organizations are paying more attention to archive functions
than in the past. “When you talk about archiving, you are talking about
the cost per gigabyte or terabyte — tape is clearly at the forefront
and when you get a 2:1 increase in capacity; customers will really
welcome the change,” he added.

So, is it really too soon for
LTO-5? “That is a key question,” admitted Amatruda. “I think the tape
vendors could reap the install and maturity of early LTO generations
for a bit longer but I think the tape vendors are also under the gun to
continue to roll out higher capacity and remain cost effective. Tape is
not dead and it’s not even wounded, and LTO has been a terrific format
so far,” added Covey.

David G. Hill, analyst at the Mesabi Group
LLC, said he expects LTO-5 will build upon the success of its
predecessor LTO-4. “The LTO program has been a successful one, and,
other than the impact due to the existing financial climate, I would
expect that to continue,” he said.”Even though disk-to-disk backup
options, including VTLs [virtual tape libraries], are likely to
increase

[Author]

May 19, 2009 at 12:27 PM