Spectra Logic Ships LTO-5 Drives and Media

Spectra Logic is now shipping LTO-5 drives and Spectra certified LTO-5 media cartridges in its T-Series tape libraries.

The increased capacity and throughput rates of LTO-5 combined with the small footprint and low power requirements of Spectra Logic’s tape libraries provide customers with the best storage density and energy efficiency in a tape library.

LTO-5 media cartridges have a native capacity of 1.5 TB (3TB with 2:1 compression) and LTO-5 drives have a native transfer rate of up to 140MBps (280MBps in compressed mode). The media capacity of LTO-5 is almost 2X the capacity of LTO-4’s native 800GB.

“Organizations today are dealing with the convergence of unrelenting data growth, demanding archive requirements surrounding data accessibility and retrieval, as well as space, power and budget constraints. These factors are leading to increased data center interest in reliable and affordable tape technologies,” said Molly Rector, vice president of marketing and product management for Spectra Logic. “Spectra Logic’s high density, energy efficient tape libraries with LTO-5 technology are an ideal solution for addressing these challenges, and provide superior density, capacity and performance.”

Key benefits of Spectra Logic’s tape libraries
with LTO-5 drives and media include:

• 1.5TB native capacity per tape lets customers manage growing data storage more cost effectively. Spectra T-Series tape library capacity options now scale from an entry point of 15 TB up to 180 PB of native storage.
• 140 MB/s native throughput to each drive allows streamed data throughput to Spectra libraries, optimizes the use of back-up windows and allows faster data archive. Spectra T-Series tape libraries now can deliver over 240TB/hour of uncompressed throughput into the tape archive.
• Two generations of backwards compatibility to LTO-3 offers seamless access to archive and backup data on tape and smooth integration of new higher performance interface standards. The backward compatibility ensures that data that was written up to five years ago can easily interface with contemporary and higher-density formats.
• Spectra’s Media Lifecycle Management (MLM) offers tape media and data integrity verification to ensure data integrity.
• Low power and cooling requirements minimize data center power consumption to meet budgetary and compliance needs. LTO-5 offers a 40 percent reduction in idle power consumption over LTO-4 technology.
• Spectra’s BlueScale encryption with key management standard edition is included for free with all LTO libraries. Data encryption in T-Series offers a fast, reliable and affordable encryption solution that minimizes the risk of data loss and subsequent legal and publicity implications.
• A committed technology roadmap for new capacity and throughput developments that extends through LTO-8 provides confidence that archive and backup data will be securely stored for many years to support long term storage requirements.

Spectra Logic launched its industry exclusive LTO-5 pre-purchase program in September 2009 to provide the benefits of LTO-5 to existing customers. This program allowed customers to purchase LTO-4 drives and exchange them for LTO-5 drives once available, providing investment protection and a guaranteed technology refresh.

“EAGLE has been a Spectra Logic channel partner for nearly 20 years. We value Spectra’s ability to lead the market rather than follow it – which is reflected in its robust product suite,” said Dave Hieschel, president and CEO of EAGLE Software, Inc. “Spectra realized that simply supporting the latest drive technology was not ‘enough,’ so they established an industry-exclusive LTO-5 pre-purchase program that has been advantageous to both EAGLE and our customers. Approximately 25 percent of our customer base has taken advantage of Spectra’s LTO-5 pre-purchase program – enabling their smooth transition to LTO-5.”

Pricing and availability
Spectra’s T-Series tape libraries are available for purchase with LTO-5 drives and media today. Spectra’s LTO-5 drives include a dual port, native 8 Gb fibre channel interface that is compatible with existing 2Gb and 4Gb fibre channel switches and host bus adapters. LTO-5 drives are fully compatible with Spectra’s BlueScale Encryption with key management, Spectra’s MLM, drive-level AES-256 bit encryption key generation and WORM media capabilities. Pricing for a T50e with one half-height LTO-5 drive and ten LTO-5 media slots begins at $10,500.