Spectra Logic Librairies With IBM 20TB (Uncompressed) TS1160 Tapes

Spectra Logic Corp. announced a tape technology, the IBM TS1160, for use in the company’s enterprise tape libraries. TFinity ExaScale, T950, T950v and T380 tape libraries will support the new tape drive and media.

TFinity ExaScale tape library

When fully populated with the TS1160 tape drives and media, a TFinity ExaScale will store and allow access to more than 2EBs of data, making TFinity ExaScale tape library the largest single storage machine in the world.

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Providing a number of technological breakthroughs over the TS1155 drive, the TS1160 tape drive and media expands storage capacity to 20TB per cartridge (uncompressed), increases data throughput to 400MB/s (uncompressed), and delivers twice the FC interface speed at 16Gb/s or up to 25GbE.

“As we go into our 40th year, Spectra once again is delivering another breakthrough in tape innovation for users with immense storage needs,” said Nathan Thompson, CEO, Spectra. “To achieve this level of technological advancement, a new custom ASIC chip was developed by IBM; one that will be used in future generations of TS and LTO enterprise tape technologies, including LTO-9. Ongoing engineering feats such as these underscore the value and longevity of tape technology and validate Spectra’s commitment to offering best-in-class tape solutions that align with tape’s extensive roadmap.“

Benefiting the company’s customers in government, scientific research, HPC, media and entertainment, and public cloud environments, the upcoming JE tape cartridge, which works with the TS1160 tape drive, is engineered with aligned Barium Ferrite (BaFe) particles that provide better signal-to-noise ratios, enabling a native storage capacity of 20TB per cartridge. In addition, the same advanced TMR (Tunnelling Magneto-Resistive) head used to achieve higher capacities and speeds in the TS1155 and LTO-8 drives are being used for the TS1160 drive. The firm’s new tape offerings are designed to read and write media formatted by the TS1155 and TS1150 drives and read tapes formatted by drives older than two generations.

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“Tape is the most reliable and economical storage technology available to protect massive amounts of data,” said Fred Moore, president, Horison Information Strategies. “The tape industry continues to keep pace with published roadmaps and surpass other media types by leveraging technology innovations from the prior generation and designing new components for each subsequent generation.“

The company’s offering of the TS1160 tape drive for its TFinity library will be available in December 2018. ^(*)

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