It seems like just yesterday when somebody said to me, “what could I possibly do with 2.3 GB of storage on a tape – it would take me years to backup 2.3 GB of data!”
My, how things change! With the proliferation of email, digital images and Microsoft applications in our daily business lives, the amount of data that any one company has to backup is doubling and tripling every 6-12 months … and the average SMB now backs up something in the neighborhood of 4 TB per week.
There was a time not so awfully long ago when it would have taken 1,800 tapes to back up 4 TB of data. Can you imagine? Well thanks to the advancements in tape technologies and formats, we can now backup that 4 TB on just 3 cartridges … assuming of course, you’re using LTO technology.
Anybody who’s been paying attention to the “tape world” for any length of time remembers the old “DAT vs. 8mm” battle … followed by the “8mm vs. DLT” battle … followed by the “SDLT vs. LTO” battle. Well with LTO now commanding 93% market share in the midrange tape drive market, and Quantum announcing they have suspended any further development in SDLT, I think it’s safe to say LTO not only won the battle, but they’ve officially won the war.
What’s the straw that broke the camel’s back? In the early part of 2007, the 4th-generation LTO tape drive became available … otherwise known as LTO-4. With 800 GB of native capacity on a cartridge and a native transfer rate of up to 120 MB/s, LTO-4 set the standard for high-capacity, high-performance tape backup and archive and no other tape technology, including SDLT, could keep up.
But it isn’t just about the astounding capacity and performance that makes LTO-4 the “next best thing since sliced bread”. LTO-4 also brings new technology to tape backup and archive. For example, the previous Ultra160 and 2 Gb fibre interfaces have been replaced with Ultra320 SCSI, 4 Gb native fibre channel and SAS for users who are changing and updating their environments. And we’ve all heard stories about the security risks associated with FedEx or UPS losing a bunch of backup tapes. The LTO tape drive manufacturers solved that one by adding encryption capability to LTO-4 … the first time we’ve seen encryption capability in a tape drive. Yet while LTO-4 brings new advancements to tape backup and archive, it has kept one of the most important elements … backward compatibility. The last thing any end user wants to hear is that all of the time and money they have invested in years-worth of backup tapes is wasted. LTO-4 vendors took that into account and made LTO-4 read AND write compatible with LTO-3, and read compatible with LTO-2 ... protecting end-user investments in the nearly 80,000,000 (that's right ... 80 million!) LTO cartridges shipped worldwide.
LTO-4 is an ideal technology for tape autoloaders and libraries. If you need that kind of capacity and performance, you have a demanding data protection scheme that calls for efficiency and reliability – two of the key advantages of tape automation. As a result, the majority of LTO drives are used in tape automation. Despite the capacity advances offered by LTO-4, if you’re backing up 4 TB a week, you still need an automated backup/archive solution so that you don’t have to devote resources to swapping tapes … resources that can make mistakes. That’s why Overland Storage was so eager to integrate LTO-4 into our entire line of tape automation products, being the first automation vendor to market with HP® LTO-4 tape drives and giving users backup and archive capacities ranging from 9.6 TB to 800 TB. Just think … if you’re backing up or archiving 4 TB per week, you can protect up to 200 weeks of data without ever touching a tape!
With all of the advances offered with LTO-4, there are some things you need to keep in mind:
1) SAS connectivity: why did LTO-4 come out with a SAS interface? All of the major server manufacturers are moving away from SCSI attach towards SAS, due to the performance advantages associated with SAS. As a result, you see a lot of server-based and disk-backup-based SAS products. However, this “requirement” for SAS hasn’t materialized in the tape automation world yet. Think about it. If you have an investment in SCSI application servers, and you replace them with new SAS application servers, are you likely to throw away your perfectly-good SCSI backup servers? No. Chances are you’ll re-deploy those SCSI servers as a backup server – so you’ll still need a SCSI library to attach to that backup server. The other likelihood is that in recent years, as you’ve updated your network to accommodate changing data management needs, you’ve implemented an FC SAN. In that case, you need a FC-based library, not SAS. So while the SAS technology is available for single tape drives that get integrated into a server, it’s not yet a requirement for autoloader and library-based backup and archive operations.
2) encryption: while it sounds like a great thing, keep in mind the finality of encryption. In the old days, users hated it when library manufacturers used keys (like the one you have to the front door of your house) to “secure” the contents of the library. Users constantly were losing those keys and they couldn’t get to their data. The same scenario is possible with encryption. If you lose that “electronic” key … there’s absolutely NO WAY to “break in” to your data cartridge. You also need to make sure those encryption keys are managed in the right place. Overland Storage, like many other vendors, recommends that you utilize your backup software package (i.e. BackupExec, ARCserve, etc.) to do key management. Since that application is managing all other aspects of your data (where it is, what format it exists in, etc.), it makes sense to also manage encryption keys with this same system. Doing anything outside the systems puts the availability of your data at risk. However, keep in mind that many independent software vendors (ISVs) have not yet added key management support to their applications. We expect to see that capability in the major applications by the first part of 2008, but check with your software vendor before you go marching down the encryption path. The good news is that if/when you’re ready to use encryption, it’s a standard feature already available in LTO-4 drives … ready to use now or later.
3) 120 MB/second performance is blazing fast … 432 GB/hour native on each tape drive you have in your tape automation system. But remember that many networks don’t have the bandwidth to support that kind of performance. I liken it to the following analogy: a lot of people here in Southern California buy fancy BMWs that can do 120 mph … but anybody who lives here knows that the traffic congestion says you’ll do 50 mph if you’re lucky! That doesn’t mean you like your fancy BMW any less or that it still doesn’t serve a purpose. It just means that your mileage may vary … performance on tape drive is the same thing.
LTO-4 and LTO-4 tape automation bring the latest technology to backup and archive, ensuring you have the highest capacity, fastest, most cost-effective tape solution for your data protection needs. And LTO-5 is already in the works …
Whether you’re using tape automation as backup medium, or your using tape automation as an archive solution that’s part of a more comprehensive tiered data protection scheme, the amount of data you need to protect is growing at astounding rates and LTO-4 is a perfect solution!
800 GB on a tape?
We’ve come a long way, baby!
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Peri Grover
Director, Product Management