IBM Adds Punch To LTO 5 Tape

Along with other vendors, IBM is announcing the latest generation in Linear Tape-Open (LTO) tape technology--Ultrium 5 tape drives. This new generation is attractive to IT organizations that either use or may be planning to use LTO tape technology in terms of feeds and speeds that follow the typical high-technology, evolutionary path of providing "better, faster, cheaper" capabilities. But IBM is also offering two new differentiating capabilities that add extra punch to its announcement.

The LTO program has been one of the most outstanding examples of successful business collaboration among competing vendors. The setting of an open standard for open systems magnetic tape technology has resulted in the near or complete extermination of what were once competitive, proprietary product lines, such as Quantum's DLT and Sony's AIT products. LTO technology's successful marketplace acceptance came about from increasing customers' freedom of choice for buying open systems tape technology. Although HP, IBM, and Quantum jointly define the standard for each generation of LTO technology--called the Ultrium format--any company can obtain a license and develop either tape media or tape drives that meet the requirements for a particular Ultrium generation. The result is that any Ultrium-compatible tape media can operate in any Ultrium tape drive of compatible generations. This interoperability and the fact that a number of manufacturers make tape drives and tape media creates a robust and competitive market, following an example amply demonstrated through the adoption of standards throughout history.

The LTO specifications describe what needs to be done, not how a manufacturer goes about achieving that goal, so the basics are common. Among those basics are the "feeds and speeds" everyone is looking for and Ultrium 5 is impressive on that front. The native physical capacity of a tape cartridge is 1.5TB, which typically turns into 3TB after compression, following the general guidelines of 2:1 compression and recognizing that "your mileage may vary" depending upon the actual data being compressed. The LTO 5 tape drives can operate up to a native 140MB/sec data transfer rate, which doubles in the typical case where the data has been compressed on tape.

Of course, IBM, as one of the prime movers in the LTO program, keeps up with the competitive "Joneses." IBM announced its LTO 5 tape drives--both a full-height and half-height tape drives. The half-height drive is designed to handle small-to-medium workload requirements; whereas, the fullheight drive is designed for medium-to-large workload requirements. The tape drives have generational backwards compatibility in that they can read/write the prior generation (Ultrium 4) tape cartridges and read data on Ultrium 3 tape cartridges. That is critical because tape-using IT organizations need to preserve their investment in older media and move in a gradual and planned manner to the new technology.

Tape libraries are not part of the LTO specifications, but tape libraries that use LTO tape drives must work with Ultrium 5-based tape drives. IBM supports the use of LTO 5 in its IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library and plans to introduce it to its entire line of auto-loaders and libraries. This is one area where the evolution of LTO becomes quite clear. We used to talk about maximum capacity in TBs; now we talk double-digit PBs. The TS3500 tape library can hold almost 2PB of LTO 5 data on 10 square feet in a high-density frame and up to 30PB of uncompressed storage capacity if the library were to be expanded to its maximum. That's a lot of storage by any measure.It would be fine if that were all there was to the announcement. But IBM has added some pizazz by delivering some new capabilities that differentiate its LTO offerings. To an analyst, hearing about something really new, not just improved feeds and speeds, in a tape technology announcement is unexpected and when combined with the fact that the new capabilities are very useful, that makes it exciting (at least for this analyst).

The LTO Ultrium format specifications include a new feature called media partitioning. IBM is introducing the IBM Long Term File System, which will utilize media partitioning. Now, on the surface, those don't sound exciting, but bear with me. Media partitioning takes advantage of an LTO specification that permits cartridges to support two media partitions. One partition can hold the content, and the other partition can hold the content's index which can make an enabled tape self-describing. Self-describing means that all the information needed to determine what is on a tape is contained within the tape, removing the need for a proprietary application to determine the tape's contents. The IBM Long Term File System allows the viewing and access of tape files in a fashion similar to disk or other removable media. The system can mount a tape as if it were a hard drive. It takes advantage of the self-describing tape, with its index partition and its data partition, that enables a hierarchical directory structure and contains file names, file properties, metadata files, faster search indexes, and domain-specific information.

So why is this so important? A lot of fixed content data does not require instant access, such as in transaction processing systems, but does require reasonably fast recovery. If tape can act for all essential purposes as if it were disk, the cost advantages of using tape over disk open up a whole range of opportunities for tape vendors and solutions. That includes video archiving, medical imaging, and eDiscovery requirements. Accessing data that may need a very long retention period through a tape file system using a file browser without application dependency should prove to be very useful. And so that is why it is exciting.

High technology can and typically does initially evolve in a revolutionary fashion. After the first generation of a new product however, the advances tend to be evolutionary. As demonstrated by the newest generation of LTO, that is fine. Ultrium 5 technology offers some very positive benefits, such as reducing the number of cartridges used and improving backup solutions through larger capacity and faster throughput. So congratulations are in order.

But as the saying goes, IBM does "all of this and more." The introduction of media partitioning and a long-term file system, which enables tape to be used as if it were disk, is very practical. That ability to use tape as disk means that tape, in addition to its traditional support of backup and restore, as well as long-term deep archiving processes, can now dynamically enhance its role in active and long-term archiving. As such, it can support very infrequently accessed data that has a long retention life but has to be recovered relatively quickly on demand, as well as provide the means for the bulk archiving of large files more cost effectively stored on tape. All in all, IBM's new differentiating capabilities add a real punch to its new LTO 5 solutions announcement. Disclosure: At the time that this story was published, David Hill of the Mesabi Group is doing business with IBM.