IBM TS4300 LTO Tape Library

IBM TS4300 tape library delivers a highly scalable, easy-to-manage, and secure solution to meet long-term storage requirements

IBM TS4300 Tape Library is the next-generation storage solution designed to help mid-size enterprises respond to future challenges, including increasing data volume and cost of data center storage footprints, difficulty migrating data across vendor platforms, and increased complexity of IT training and management as staff resources shrink.

The TS4300 Tape Library is an external 3U standalone or rack-mountable unit that incorporates LTO Ultrium 6 and/or 7 tape drives.

Requirements for secure, long-term data retention, especially in the financial services, healthcare, and life sciences industries, are common and increasingly stringent, with data volumes growing as a result.

Tape storage offers a less costly long-term storage option than disk drives or flash. Data stored on tape kept offline or on write-once media is nearly impossible to hack.

TS4300 Tape Library helps support requirements for organizations that must provide secure, long-term storage for their data, enabling them to start with a 3U-high base library and scale to as many as seven modules, and to increase cartridge and drive capacity as needed, with a maximum capacity of 272 LTO Ultrium tape slots and 1.6PB of native storage based on LTO-7.

LTO Ultrium 6 tape drives support the LTO Generation 6 media specification with the compressed capacity of up to 6.25TB with 2.5:1 compression (up to 2.5TB native capacity) per tape cartridge.

LTO Ultrium 7 tape drives support the LTO Generation 7 media specification of more than double the compressed capacity of up to 15TB with 2.5 to 1 compression (up to 6TB native capacity) when compared to LTO-6.

The base module of the TS4300 tape library can accommodate either up to three Ultrium half-high tape drives with either SAS or FC type of attachment, one Ultrium full-high with FC type of attachment, or a combination of one Ultrium full-high plus one Ultrium half high tape drives.

It can also hold up to 32 data cartridge slots in two removable magazines, including a standard five-cartridge I/O station. Other standard features include a 240 x 128 pixel monochrome graphic display with a front USB port, a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, and a high-speed barcode reader.

On its maximum configuration of one base module and six expansions, the TS4300 tape library can accommodate up to 21 Ultrium half-high tape drives, 7 Ultrium full-high tape drives, or any combination of both based on the drive form factor (space needed for one full-height drive equals two half-height drives), and data cartridge slots.

Simplify tape storage deployment and management
TS4300 is based on a control system to help speed deployment and simplify management. Error recovery and reporting, library health monitoring and alerting, and auto-recovery features help to speed diagnostics and resolution. An internal Ethernet automation drive interface increases drive communication speed for faster code updates and log downloads.

The company offers diverse management software solutions for TS4300 to enhance the use of multipath architecture, as well as the use of a single TS4300 library. The library software includes API hooks that enable easy integration of IBM software.

Management software options

• IBM Spectrum Archive: TS4300 leverages Spectrum Archive for direct, intuitive and graphical access to data stored in IBM tape drives and libraries by incorporating the IBM LTFS format standard. LTFS compatibility allows tape-stored data to be accessed as if it were on disk or flash storage. IBM Spectrum Archive enables users of LTO Ultrium 7 and 6 tape library systems to inventory cartridges and read, write, and search data on any cartridge, enabling writing of metadata and tagging of individual files for easy and fast access to files stored on cartridges.
• IBM Spectrum Protect: Spectrum Protect enables users to create, manage, and optimize archives, and provides management of concurrent copies of content, plus active, inactive, and off-site content.

Product Preview
The firm intends to introduce Path Failover and Library-Managed Encryption capabilities including support to IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager as well as ServicePac Options (available on certain regions) to help protect the client investment on the TS4300 tape libraries in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Key prerequisites
Appropriate levels of host software are required to attach and support the TS4300 Tape Library with IBM LTO Ultrium 7 or IBM LTO Ultrium 6 tape drives to select IBM Power Systems, IBM System z, Linux, and Microsoft Windows servers.

Planned availability dates

• August 25, 2017: All models and features, except as noted below
• September 8, 2017: All models and features for Mexico, Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan
• March 9, 2018: Feature numbers ACY1 (OEM 1 Order indicator) and ACW1 (OEM 1 FC Order indicator)