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Price/GB Less Than One Penny on LTO-6 Tape Cartridge Media

According to LTO Program - but without drives and libraries

The LTO Program announced that LTO Generation 6 tape has reached another cost-per-gigabyte milestone of below a cent.

Today, LTO storage can be as low as 0.8 cents per gigabyte and $8 per terabyte based on the current market price of tape media.(*)

As the price per gigabyte for tape storage continues to drop, LTO plays an increasingly vital role in the datacenter for a range of unique datasets and stages in the data lifecycle,” said Rob Clark, SVP, Quantum Corporation. “LTO allows organizations to keep more data for longer periods of time by storing the right data at the right time on the most cost-effective storage tier.

When factors such as equipment, media, maintenance, energy costs and floor space are taken into account, LTO tape storage technology continues to be an cost-effective and energy-efficient solution for storage managers worldwide. The Clipper Group found that the average disk-based solution costs 26 times the TCO for an average tape-based solution.

The cost of energy alone for the average disk-based solution exceeds the entire TCO for the average tape-based solution,” said David Reine, senior analyst, The Clipper Group. “Tape, with a more than 60-year history of success in the data center, has evolved to a point where it can be the solution of choice for the preservation of data in every data center. Tape is an obvious solution, so why not use it?

Current generation of LTO technology
LTO generation 6 – supports tape cartridge storage compressed capacity of up to 6.25TB (**), more than twice the compressed capacity over the previous generation, and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 400MB/s (**) for over 1.4 terabytes of storage performance an hour per drive. As with previous generations, LTO-6 drives provide backward compatibility with the ability to read and write LTO generation 5 cartridges and read LTO generation 4 cartridges, helping to preserve media investments and ease implementation.

Click to enlarge

LTO_10GenChart

Last fall, the LTO Program announced the extension of the LTO product roadmap through generation 10. The extended roadmap includes generations 9 and 10. The new generation guidelines call for compressed capacities of 62.5TB for generation 9 and 120TB for generation 10 (**).

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

Buyers seeking LTO Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the LTO Ultrium format compliance verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges. Storage and media manufacturers interested in licensing LTO formats may obtain information by contacting the LTO Program.

Linear Tape-Open (LTO)
The LTO Ultrium format is a scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and continuously enhanced by technology providers HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation (and their predecessors) to help address the demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise server environments. This capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.

The LTO Ultrium format has a roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only and is subject to change or withdrawal. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. The roadmap is intended to outline a general direction of technology and should not be relied upon in making a purchasing decision. Format compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO Program. Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensed basis.

(*) Assuming LTO-6 cartridge price of $50.50 based on a pricing survey of more than two dozen websites offering LTO-6 cartridges and assuming compressed capacity of a single cartridge. Actual prices may vary.

(**) Assuming a 2.5:1 compression achieved with larger compression history buffer available beginning with LTO generation 6 drives.

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