First Step for LTO-6 (Native 3.2TB, 210MB/s)

The Linear Tape-Open Program Technology Provider Companies – HP, IBM and Quantum – announced the availability of licenses for the LTO Ultrium Generation 6 format.

Plans for specifications for the Generation 6 tape cartridge include capacity of up to 8 TB, almost triple the capacity over the previous generation, and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 525 MB per second, assuming a 2.5:1 compression with use of a larger compression engine history buffer.

Also included are features from previous generations of the LTO Ultrium format, such as encryption to help protect data in transition, Write Once Read Many (WORM) support to help address data security and compliance needs, as well as the dual partitioning feature, introduced in Generation 5, which when utilized by the Linear Tape File System specification can help provide faster data access and improve data management.

"LTO technology’s latest advancement was developed with the understanding that tape-based archiving continues to be a critical component of clients’ overall storage strategy," said Chris Powers, director of Nearline Solutions, HP. "LTO Generation 6 enables vendors to deliver storage solutions with performance benefits as well as increased data capacity."

Plans for LTO Ultrium 6 drive specifications include backwards-compatible read-and-write capability with LTO Ultrium 5 cartridges, and backwards-compatible read capabilities with LTO Ultrium 4 cartridges, helping to protect investments and ease implementation.

How to License LTO Ultrium Technology
The LTO Program offers several different license packages – from enhanced packages that provide the specifications and licenses to manufacture LTO Ultrium products, to basic packages providing LTO Ultrium format specifications.

Comments

The announcement of LTO-6 specs for licensing is a first step for the new format. For former LTO-5, it was revealed in January 2010 or 18 months ago, and the first LTO-5 tape drives from HP and IBM were launched three months later. It took three years to jump from LTO-4 to LTO-5.

Native capacity and transfer rate for LTO-6 media are 3.2TB and 210MB/s respectively for LTO-6, vs. 1.5TB and 140MB/s for LTO-5. It's more than twice the capacity now at the same level as current highest capacity HDDs (3TB). The transfer rate increased 50%. This time the LTO consortium previews "a 2.5:1 compression with use of a larger compression engine history buffer." It was 2:1 for LTO-5. No information was given at all on the new technologies used to increase the specs of LTO.

As usual the latest generation can read and write the former one and read only LTO-3.

Next one LTO-7 is supposed to be once more 2x the capacity (6.4TB) with 1.5x more for transfer rate (315MB/s) but we don't know when, to be followed by LTO-8, the last one (12.8TB, 472MB/s) on the roadmap.

LTO is the last evolving tape technology as we doubt that HP will continue to push 8mm helical scan DDS/DAT beyond current DAT 320 format (native 160GB and 12MB/s). All the other ones are dead but half-inch tape cartridges for mainframes from IBM (3599, native 4TB, 250MB/s) and Oracle/Sun (T10000C, native 5TB - record capacity for tape media -, 240MB/s).

This market is declining and tapes are definitively going to be used only for massive archiving and no more for backup in the next future.