Quantum Corp. announced that LTO Ultrium format generation 8 technology will be available in its†Scalar†tape libraries and†StorNext AEL†archive systems beginning in†December 2017. This latest generation of LTO tape extends tape’s value leadership position for low-cost, highly efficient storage with 2X capacity gain and 20 percent performance improvements over LTO-7 — ideal for coping with the massive growth of unstructured data. Quantum Scalar and StorNext AEL are the most efficient tape automation solutions available — with up to almost 10 PB uncompressed in a single 19-inch rack, and up to 144 PB uncompressed within a standard data center aisle — enabling organizations to affordably meet long-term storage challenges by reducing data center footprint, lowering power and cooling costs and reducing administration time.
Quantum Scalar: The Most Efficient Tape Storage Today
Quantum Scalar tape libraries include many high-efficiency features that make them uniquely designed to leverage the latest LTO-8 advances:
- Converged design with optional embedded compute capabilities,†enabling significant quantities of data to be stored closer to the application and reducing the load on network infrastructure.
- Self-healing and self-protecting backup and archive leveraging EDLM†policy-based media health checks and automated data migration.
- In-library vaulting with Active Vault†improves security and access to vaulted content while reducing costs.
- Library task automation with RESTful web services†for easier automation of repetitive tasks.
- Best-in-class storage density,†maximizing rack utilization with up to 24 PB in a single 19-inch rack.
- 80 PLUS Gold Certified power supplies,†yielding power and cooling savings while reducing the environmental impact of a data center, certified to be 90 percent efficient at 50 percent loading.
Tape Innovation for Persistent and Emerging Challenges
The new LTO generation 8 doubles the tape cartridge capacity from the previous LTO generation 7, enabling customers to store up to 30 TB per cartridge, providing more cost-effective, long-term retention of data. In addition, with tape drive data transfer rates of up to 900 MB per second, or more than 3.24 TB of data an hour per drive, LTO-8 systems allow large files to be transferred more quickly. LTO-8 also includes a new format feature that allows customers to increase the capacity of the latest LTO generation 7 cartridges by up to 50 percent to store 22.5 TB of enterprise data.
Quantum will leverage these technology enhancements with Quantum certified LTO-8 media to deliver multitier solutions for persistent data growth and protection challenges in areas such as media and entertainment, cloud-based cold storage, video surveillance, university research and autonomous driving. The combination of LTO-8 technology with Scalar and StorNext AEL tape automation offers better storage densities than proprietary tape technologies, and with Quantum certified media, LTO bit error rates are equivalent to those of legacy proprietary media. LTO technology is the ideal solution for companies using tape for low-cost, long-term “big data” storage, or companies using tape as an offline copy to protect against ransomware.
* Assumes a 2.5:1 compression achieved with larger compression history buffer available beginning with LTO generation 6 drives.
Availability
LTO-8 technology is scheduled to be available in†December 2017†for Quantum’s Scalar i6000, Scalar i6, Scalar i3 and Scalar i500 libraries as well as Quantum Certified media, with other platforms following, subject to compliance verification. Quantum will begin taking orders in October and currently offers an LTO-8 technology prepurchase program, enabling customers to keep pace with tape innovation by deploying LTO-7 drives today and swapping them later for LTO-8 drives.
