BLAZING SPEED:LTO Ultrium 5® technology has up to 280 MB/s data transfer rates (assuming 2:1 compression) to help improve productivity - Up to 1TB per hour of backup performance per drive.
HUGE CARTRIDGE CAPACITY: 3TB (assuming 2:1 compression) to help reduce storage costs - as low as 3 cents per GB.1
DATA SECURITY: Tape drive-based 256 bit encryption to help protect sensitive information
COMPLIANCE: WORM (Write Once Read Many) tape support to help address compliance requirements.
FILE MANAGEMENT: The LTO-5 specification enables a new dual partitioning feature which can help provide faster data access and improved data management. With the LTO Linear Tape File System one partition can hold the content index and the other can hold the content allowing the tape to be self-describing. The tape can be utilized in a fashion like disk or other removable media including directory tree structures.
COMPATIBILITY: LTO-5 drives are designed with backwards-compatible read-and-write capability with LTO-4 cartridges, and backward read capabilities with LTO-3 cartridges, helping to protect investments and ease implementation.
EVOLVING STORAGE NEEDS
- Data is growing exponentially - some say by 50% or more each year
- Business environment is constantly changing - increasing budget challenges and customer demands
- Need to store more data for longer periods - information is key to an organization's success
- Data is at risk and must be protected - myriad of potential data destructors: system error, theft, hackers, viruses, sabotage and natural disaster
IT storage managers are expected to manage and protect data with constrained resources while dealing with increased expectations, tighter budgets, increased regulations and heightened security concerns. Businesses are also increasingly focused on total cost of ownership and rising energy costs.
DISASTER: LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY What if you were providing services to thousands of bloggers and all of their data got wiped out. This could happen, especially if the backup plan involved one disk drive replicating its data to another drive. A system error could erase the data on one drive leading the other drive to erase the backup data as well. A big disaster if there was no offline data to restore from.
In another scenario - what if you were an organization with two servers backing each other up - and hackers were able to take out both of the site's servers, rendering all information culled from years of hard work useless. Again, if there was no offline data to provide recovery it would be disastrous.
SURVIVE A HURRICANE Companies that implement best practices can actually survive disasters - and disastrous effects - by setting up procedures that can cost exponentially less than the resulting costs of large-scale data loss. A large truck express service that stood in the way of Hurricane Gaston had their data center destroyed when a blocked city drain flooded their building. The good news was that they made a tape backup of their data the night before and had the tape stored remotely. They've since implemented an even more robust procedure, which provides for no production system interruption and multiple tiers of protection including LTO tape libraries.
TAPE AND DISK TOGETHER Tape works well with disk solutions to address needs. Disk can help with fast backup and retrieval for high performance application needs. However, according to a University of California-Santa Cruz three month study1 as reported June 1, 2008, more than 90 percent of disk stored data was typically never accessed again, and another 6.5 percent was only accessed once. This data could be stored on tape. Tape is well-suited for this type of data, as it is a less expensive and less energy-consuming storage medium. Once data becomes infrequently accessed it should be moved to tape.
- With LTFS one partition can hold the content and the other can hold the content's index: the tape can be self-describing
- Can enable capabilities that can manage files directly on LTO-5 Ultrium tape and can allow for easy sharing of the tape cartridge with others
- Can provide file system access at the operating system level
- Can make viewing and access of tape files easier than ever before with directory tree structures and drag and drop capability
- Can help address the growing needs of marketplace segments with rich media such as Media and Entertainment, Medical, Digital Surveillance and more!
BEST PRACTICES IN DATA PROTECTION
A data protection plan must incorporatea copy of critical data that is stored offline and offsite. Offline data can protect from system errors, hackers and viruses. The data should also be offsite. That way, in the event of a site-wide disaster, the offsite copy of data can be used to recover. These are part of backup and data protection best practices which should include:
- Multiple degrees of protection:
at least three copies of data in different locations, with one out of region for recovery in the event of a region-wide disaster. In these situations, tape is a cost-effective and straight forward solution. - Technology diversification:
it is important to have copies on different forms of media to avoid a media or system process disaster. In this case, a mixture of disk and tape - perhaps in a D2D2T environment. - System isolation:
at least one copy of data offline to avoid intentional or unintentional corruption that can occur with online storage. - Protect access to data:
protection from data loss due to erroneous overwrite via WORM or from unauthorized access via encryption is essential for data at rest and in transit.
In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution - Tape Delivers Significant TCO Advantage over Disk
The Clipper Group examines what to do now to prepare for the ensuing decades of continuing data growth, technology change, and increasing long-term preservation requirements. For long-term archiving of digital data:
• The average disk-based solution costs 15 times the average tape-based solution
• The cost of energy alone for the average disk-based solution exceeds the entire TCO for the average tape-based solution
Tape Fallacies Exposed
Misinformation about tape storage abounds. Most strewn about by a few disk-only proponents. Tape storage continues to play a vital role for data protection. David Hill of the Mesabi Group sheds light on the most common misperceptions.
A Comparative TCO Study: VTLs and Physical Tape
This ESG study by Mark Peters evaluated a common industry-standard disk VTl deduplication system (with 15:1 reduction ratio) versus a tape library with LTO-5, drives with full nightly backups, over a five-year period. The scenarios included replicated systems and offsite tape vaults. In all circumstances, the TCO for VTL with deduplication ranged from about 2 to 4 times more expensive than the LTO-5 tape library TCO. The paper shares recent ESG research and lots more.
The Evolving Role of Disk and Tape in the Data Center
Learn about best practices in backup and archive for today's energy and cost conscious data center including performance, data protection and TCO.
Securing Sensitive Information - LTO Encryption
With a growing number of laws and regulations, financial penalties, and public notification costs, a security breach can be costly for corporations. Data managers are called upon to develop effective security for sensitive data and are turning to tape encryption. Learn more about data security, encryption and an LTO tape drive encryption user story.
1Cartridge price per GB based on street price (as of Feb, 2012) uncompressed cartridge capacity.
*LINEAR TAPE-OPEN LTO, THE LTO LOGO, ULTRIUM AND THE ULTRIUM LOGO ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF HP, IBM AND QUANTUM IN THE US AND OTHER COUNTRIES. Linear Tape File System is a trademark of IBM Corporation. ©1999 - 2012 Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Quantum. All rights reserved.