… Into Three Spectra Logic Libraries

Spectra Logic Corp. announced the integration of IBM TS1150 tape technology drives and media in three of its enterprise tape libraries: the T380, T950 and T-Finity.

TS1150 drive and media

Spectra Logic libraries with TS1150 tape technology offer customers enterprise reliability, data integrity , high capacity per tape, high density and capacity of competing libraries, and investment protection.

“Spectra tape libraries with IBM TS1150 tape technology aim to address two major issues for data intensive environments by increasing capacity at the same time as throughput,” said Steve Conway, research VP HPC, IDC. “The new technology is designed to enable high-performance computing and Fortune 500 customers to solve data management challenges by storing more data and retrieving it faster.“

This is the second time in five years that Spectra Logic has introduced a large tape library, following the release of its Spectra T-Finity in 2009. Uncompressed metrics for Spectra tape libraries with TS1150 include:

• Spectra T-Finity: 380PB in a 40-frame library; more than 3EB in an eight-library complex

• Spectra T950: 76PB in an eight-frame library

• Spectra T380: 2.6PB in a 28RU rack-mounted library

With a 150% increase in capacity and 45% increase in data rate over TS1140, TS1150 provides ast tape drive and large capacity tape media technology.

The TS1150 cartridges are quadruple the capacity of the LTO-6 tapes with 10TB at an uncompressed throughput of 360 MB/s. This increase in capacity means customers using libraries with TS Technology can increase density rather than expanding outward, using the efficiency of technology to manage storage needs.

“IBM’s TS1150 tape technology’s significant advancement in density and capacity will enable customers of all sizes to store more data faster, within budgets,” said Matt Starr, CTO, Spectra Logic. “The lion’s share of tape library acquisition costs are associated with tape media itself. TS1150’s tape cartridge pricing is now in line with competing formats, extending the new generation’s benefits beyond the elite, top tier environments. As we mark our 35th year, Spectra is delighted to offer the world’s largest capacity and highest transfer rate tape drive across its line of libraries, including the only rack-mounted system available with TS1150 technology, the 2.6PB capacity T380 library.“.

Using TS tape technology’s enhanced media reuse capability, TS1150 drives can reformat TS1140 JC media to achieve capacity and performance. Media reuse allows a TS1140 JC cartridge to store up to 7TB of uncompressed data versus the 4TB maximum capacity when written in standard TS1140 format. As a result, customers with existing TS1140 media in their inventory can import tapes into TS1150 tape drives for reformatting, and realize up to 75% more capacity-for free.

Spectra Logic will begin shipping TS1150 in its T380, T950 and T-Finity tape libraries in November 2014.

TS1150 Tape Drive Technology :

• High capacity, high performance tape drive

• Capacity: 10TB capacity per TS1150 JD cartridge native (25TB compressed @ 2:5:1)

• Performance: 360MB/s data transfer rates (700 MB/s compressed)

• Uptime: 237,000 hour MTBF

• Fast load/ready time than previous generation (11s versus 16 s)

• Fast locate/search speed (improved by 25%)

• Information security: compatible with TKLM with AES-256 bit encryption and key management

• Fifth generation backhitchless flush

• Random access ordering for fast access to random data on tape

• Supports IBM LTFS

• JC media re-use at 7TB (75% increase in capacity)

• Low bit error rate of any tape system for tape that’s 1,000 time more reliable than other technology