HP Officially Announced LTO-6

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP introduced the its StoreEver Storage tape portfolio featuring sixth-generation LTO-6 technology that delivers twice the capacity and 44% faster performance than LTO-5 in the same footprint.

When using 2.5:1 compression, LTO-6 cartridge capacity is 6.25TB, compared to 3TB for LTO-5. LTO-6 performance is 1.44TB/hr, compared to 1TB/hr for LTO-5.

A fragmented approach to data retention and protection can open organizations to legal and financial risks. From a technology perspective it can also result in high costs and management complexities. Converged data centers reduce costs and complexities, but require an approach to data protection that spans software, disk and tape technologies in order to mitigate risk.

StoreEver Storage, a broad tape storage portfolio, integrates HP’s tape products and technologies with HP Converged Storage, HP Data Protector and leading third-party backup software. This integration, coupled with new LTO-6, enables StoreEver Storage to deliver reliable long-term data protection and retention in a format that meets the needs of nearly any environment.

According to the IDC Branded Tape Tracker CQ2 2012, HP is the market share leader in units and revenue for LTO tape worldwide across individual tape drives and tape automation products.

"Tape storage is experiencing a resurgence as companies struggling with big data archives realize that a fragmented approach to protection and retention can result in added cost and risk," said David Scott, SVP and GM, Storage Division, HP. "With HP StoreEver’s capacity and resiliency, HP’s Converged Storage portfolio delivers the industry’s most comprehensive and integrated approach to storing, optimizing and protecting data, enabling clients to better simplify infrastructure and reduce costs."

The StoreEver Storage portfolio supports tape media, standalone tape drives and tape libraries to accommodate more than 44PB of data in a single system (using 2.5:1 compression and a fully populated 16 frame ESL G3 tape library.) StoreEver libraries feature removable drives and media to accommodate virtually limitless capacity, enabling clients to support the scalability requirements of their digital archives.

LTO-6 standard enhance resilience of tape
StoreEver Storage provides improved longevity for data held offline by leveraging LTO-6 tape media cartridges that offer a shelf life of up to 30 years.

To reduce the risk of media failure, HP has increased tape media durability and extended tape-head life by moving beyond the LTO-6 standard with innovations that:

• Reduce wear and enhance performance through the use of a larger roller diameter and a dynamic tape lifter that minimizes unnecessary drag.
• Improve reliability and performance with HP’s data-rate matching algorithm, which continuously adjusts the tape drive speed with the data stream coming from the host.
• Address issues proactively with StoreEver TapeAssure technology, which monitors tape drives, libraries and media to ensure that each element of the tape infrastructure is optimized for reliable writing and reading of data.
• Enhance media durability with HP’s proprietary fabrication process that coats the tape head with a protective layer.

Economically protect and retain rapidly growing data
At 2.5 cents per GB and a maximum capacity of 6.25TB per cartridge, StoreEver Storage with LTO-6 offers cost- and energy-efficient storage, making it for long-term protection and archiving of business-critical data for organizations.

Client benefits include:

• Reduced energy costs via tape drives that, unlike spinning disk drives, do not need to be constantly powered on and will default into hibernation mode after short periods of inactivity.
• An up to 93% reduction in TCO through energy savings when used for long-term archiving compared to spinning media, which requires as much as 238 times more energy than tape.

An independently funded study by The Clipper Group on the TCO of long-term archiving of digital data concluded that "the cost of energy alone for the average disk-based solution exceeds the entire TCO for the average tape-based solution." (The Clipper Group, In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution – Tape Delivers Significant TCO Advantage over Disk, David Reine and Mike Kahn, Dec. 23, 2010.)

Making offline storage as easy to use as online storage
StoreOpen file system management software with LTFS functionality makes StoreEver Storage tape as easy to manage as disk, which lowers costs and productivity.

This enables clients to:

• Improve operational agility via drag-and-drop functionality to locate and manage tape files.
• Reduce administration time by simplifying the distribution and exchange of files across organizations with heterogeneous platforms.
• Minimize business risk with the ability to manage disk backup to StoreOnce and offload data to tape directly from the backup application.
• Decrease storage management costs by controlling all disk and tape backup and replication functions through a single interface, enabled by StoreOnce Catalyst integration with HP Data Protector and third-party backup software.
• Reduce complexity by centralizing management of libraries across the world via a single interface with HP Command View Tape Library (CV-TL).

"As a production company with multiple hit TV shows, our storage capacity requirements rapidly increased, resulting in the need for a low-cost, easy-to-manage solution with virtually infinite scalability," said Will Pisnieski, VP, post production, Authentic Entertainment, Inc. "The combination of HP StoreEver Storage and StorageDNA’s DNA Evolution software is the most efficient and cost-effective archiving solution we’ve used, enabling us to dedicate more resources toward production quality by reducing storage administration and minimizing our need for future hardware investment."

Enhancing security
of long-term data retention and protection
When paired with StoreOnce Backup for information protection or StoreAll Storage for information retention, StoreEver enables clients to reduce risk by placing data on offline, portable media so it is firewalled from online threats such as viruses.

StoreEver Storage features both hardware-based data encryption and WORM protection to prevent accidental overwrites (available for LTO-6 in spring 2013.)

Pricing and availability
The StoreEver Storage portfolio of LTO-6 tape media, tape drives and tape automation products is available at a starting price of $3,999 €3,110) for an StoreEver LTO-6 tape drive and $8,600 (€8,665) for an StoreEver LTO-6 tape library.

Read also:
HP With Full Line of LTO-6 Products
Drives, autoloaders and libraries