A big ‘thank you’ to all of you who attended our webinar entitled “Trends in Tape: Looking beyond LTO-5 with LTO-6 and LTFS.”  We had the best attendance ever. This is clearly a topic of great interest to many of you out there.  Bob Cone hosted the call and the discussion was packed with a multitude of great information including LTO-6 and the overall LTO Roadmap.  But more importantly, Bob covered the implications of the roadmap and LTFS and how they fit into the overall storage picture. With so many technologies now available, storage hierarchies and designing and choosing the right building blocks for your environment continues to get more complex.  The presentation distilled much of the vast amount of available information on numerous storage alternatives into an easy-to-understand discussion. Tape, Disk and Solid State Disk / Flash were covered including where they fit now, and where they will fit in the future.  The session was recorded and is available at the link below:

Looking beyond LTO-5 with LTO-6 and LTFS

The webinar underscores how LTO-6 fits into the LTO Roadmap and its important performance and capacity improvements over past generations. It also points out the advantages of LTO-6, which is why you may be interested in Spectra’s LTO-6 Pre-Purchase program. 

How many times have you thought about buying a new car, computer, TV, or cell phone but when you found out a new technology was just around the corner, you waited?  Personally, I need to upgrade my iPhone and considered the current 4S, but am waiting for the iPhone 5. Like me, you hold off and limp along with the old technology, anxiously awaiting the new technology.  Well, when it comes to LTO technology, you don’t have to wait.  Spectra is offering our customers a cost-efficient path to get the latest LTO-5 tape drive technology available today, along with an LTO-6 option, where they will receive an LTO-6 drive to replace the -5, as soon as the LTO-6 is available. 

In addition, this is a great opportunity for customers currently on LTO-3 drives:  LTO-6 drives have read/write compatibility with one generation back (LTO-5) and read only with two generations back (LTO-4).  So, if you have LTO-3 drives and media and want to move to a new generation, you could upgrade to the LTO-6 Pre-Purchase option now, get LTO-5 drives now and replace ALL the LTO-3s, read and re-write the data to LTO-5 media.   Then, when LTO-6s are available through the pre-purchase program (with no additional cost), swap out the LTO-5 drives, and be able to read/write with the LTO-5 media.  Otherwise, if you wait and go straight to the LTO-6 drives, you will need some other way to migrate your LTO-3 media, as it will be unreadable with the LTO-6 drives.

Everything is handled at the time of ordering the LTO-5 drives, so when the LTO-6 is available, we would contact you and find out when you would like us to ship the new drives.  Then you just send the LTO-5 drives back.  And all this is done with no additional paperwork.  The new LTO-6 tape drive will double capacity and provide a 50% increase in performance over LTO-5.  With a larger compression history buffer, the expected compression ratio will go from 2:1 to 2.5:1, so LTO-6 will offer a compressed capacity of 8 TB and data transfer rates of up to 525 MB/second.  The sixth generation of LTO tape drives provides many positive implications for IT and business managers and we are excited to offer you our LTO-6 pre-purchase program: LTO-5 today and the ability to be one of the very first to get LTO-6 and all its advantages when it becomes generally available.
 

Reliability: (adv.) the extent to which an experiment, test, or measuring procedure yields the same results on repeated trials.  Dependable.  Sure.  Trustworthy.  (From our friends at Merriam-Webster). And there’s a picture of tape next to the definition.  Ok, so maybe the picture statement was a stretch, but associating the definition of reliability with tape definitely is not.

Anybody who’s been in the storage industry for more than 30 minutes has likely heard the phrase, “tape’s not reliable”.  Certain marketing machines in the technology space propagate that phrase as much as possible – occasionally with bumper stickers.  Those folks have some imagination, but generally register a bit low on the fact meter.

Here are a few things people are saying about the reliability of tape.

Bit Error Rate Favors Tape Reliability Over Disk  - Horison Information Strategies, April 2011

Summary.“Tape drives and tape media now have a higher BER and longer useful life than disk products making them better suited for the long-term data retention requirements demanded by fixed content, compliance and archive applications. For a specific amount of data transmitted, tape now has a marked reliability advantage over disk - a surprise for many.”¹

^1.“Tape: New Game.  New rules.  Tape re-architects for 21^st century data explosion.” Pg. 6. April, 2011. Horison Information Strategies

Tape More Reliable Than Disk for Long Term Storage – Curtis Preston, June 2011

Summary.

“Tape drives:

1. Write data more reliably than disk
2. Read it after they've written it to make sure they did (where disks often don't do that)
3. Have significantly less "bit rot" or "bit flip" than disk drives over time.”²

^2.“Tape more reliable than disk for long term storage.” Backup Central blog, June 2, 2011

Tape Drives 700% More Reliable Than 10 Years Ago – Debbie Beach, Sylvatica Consultants, 2009

LTO drives are specified with an impressive mean-time-between-failure rate (MTBF) of 250,000 hours at 100% duty cycle, that’s 700% more than the MTBF of tape technologies created a decade ago.³

^3.“The evolving role of tape and disk in the data center.” Pg. 7. 2009, Beech, Debbie; Sylvatica White Paper

One is an accident.  Two is a coincidence.  Three becomes a trend.  The reliability of recording data to tape for storage over the long term is hard to beat.  Could that by why tape roles on?

To learn more about Why Tape Rolls On, see parts 1 through 4 of this series discussing the Security, Green Storage, Speed and Density characteristics of tape.

Speed (n.) Swiftness. Rapidity. Rate of motion or performance. (from Merriam Webster)

A trade show participant once told me he didn’t use tape because, “…it wasn’t fast enough”.  When asked how fast he needed to move data he said he needed to move it at about 200 MB/s for his backup purposes.  Furthermore, he believed only disk was fast enough to deliver.  When told a single LTO-4 tape drive could stream data at 120 MB/s and only 2 drives were needed to meet his requirement, he was shocked.  Unfortunately, his perception of tape is not exceptional given the marketing dollars spent “educating the masses” about the speed of disk versus tape.

So what is it about tape’s speed that storage buyers are missing?  If one looks only at random seek time, critical within on-line transaction processing environments for instance, then tape is indeed slower than disk.   But that’s not the only performance metric that’s important. 

Raw throughput can be a requirement in big data environments when moving huge files quickly from storage to application for processing.  Today’s tape drives are built to deliver speed in these areas.  For instance, LTO-5 tape drives move data at 280 MB/s compressed while enterprise tape drives from IBM are capable of slinging data around at 360 to 650+ MB/s compressed respectively.  This means it’s possible to reach transfer rates of upwards of 1PB per hour given today’s enterprise library configurations.  Believe it or not, there are HPC users currently pushing requirements for 1PB per hour data rates.  Tape can deliver that kind of speed on that kind of scale.

When it comes to transporting data between sites, the performance of physical tape movement becomes really interesting.  For example, electronically moving 10 TB of data via an OC-3 or OC-12 line can be expensive running from $10,000 to well over $100,000 per month respectively.  At these prices you have the distinct privilege of transporting that data in 6.1 days for an OC-3 and 1.5 days for an OC-12.  In contrast, you can put 10 TB of data on 2-4 tapes, depending on the type, drop them into a FedEx box and ship them overnight at a cost that’s little more than a rounding error relative to that of the cost of the digital pipes.  In other words, you can’t overestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes – especially for the price!

Will you always have to move data this fast?  Maybe not, but when you do, tape can help you do it at a fraction of the cost of the alternatives.  Maybe that’s why tape rolls on.

To learn more about Why Tape Rolls On, see part  2 of this series discussing the Green Storage characteristics of tape.

by Mark Weis

You are approaching the end of federal buying season (tips here) just as Spectra Logic is wrapping up a record 2011 fiscal year (our CEO’s comments are here.) As a company, we achieved 30 percent overall growth and 49 percent growth in enterprise tape sales. Now is a good time for my annual State of the Union address- to relay what end users are reporting from the field, and share why Spectra Logic Federal revenues grew an astronomical 42 percent over this same time period last year. This combination will supply insight to the healthy contribution that Federal has made to the company’s recent achievements.

1.       IT managers in Federal data centers know it’s not practical to maintain all of their data on costly, constantly spinning disk systems. The power-friendly nature of tape coupled with its cost effective benefits for long-term storage simply make sense.

2.       For those who oversee the “bigger picture”- as in managing the entire data center- archiving on tape is a smart way to reduce your overall IT spend.

3.       High capacity and performance is demanded at data-intensive enterprises and HPC sites within Federal agencies. We’ve seen an increased interest in both subcategories within Federal this past year.

4.       Spectra expanded several partnerships in fiscal 2011, including systems integrators General Dynamics (summary here) Lockheed Martin (press releasehere).

5.       This fiscal year, we’re growing our presence with US Military bases and systems integrators overseas by expanding our Federal program with increased staffing, events and special programs in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. 

6.       We are Federal friendly. Spectra Logic is classified as a small business, we manufacture our storage products in the USA, hold our own GSA schedule, are listed on many federal purchasing contracts, and have developed expertise about your specific needs since we established the Federal division in 2004.

Spectra Logic Federal is currently hiring sales representatives and business development specialists in Boulder, Colo. and Washington, D.C. Current openings can be foundhere.

How can Spectra Logic help you tackle the end of Federal buying season? Contact me directly at markwe@spectralogic.com.

Well, apparently ‘Big Data’ organizations dealing with the data explosion care quite a bit about these topics.  

Numerous customers recently attended Spectra Logic’s 2011 TAP (T-Series Advisory Panel) meeting to discuss industry trends and roadmaps for archive, tape and overall storage.  The TAP consists of a select group of Spectra’s tape library users who convene annually to discuss their product experience and wish list for future developments and features. Attendees this year represented various HPC environments including national labs, genomics, cloud services, media and entertainment, financial services and manufacturing.

Customers gained insight on overall HPC storage trends from HPC analyst Addison Snell (@addisonsnell on Twitter), CEO of Intersect360.  Developers from IBM and FujiFilm demonstrated their commitment to tape technology by providing overviews of their LTO and enterprise tape roadmaps including their recent joint research demonstrating 35 TB tape capacity.  Finally, Spectra Logic executives held interactive sessions with customers on our storage roadmap.

Here are a few takeaways from customers at the August 2011 TAP meeting:

• Archive Matters.    Customers see archive solutions as a key element in cost-effectively managing data explosion.   They applaud Spectra Logic and other vendors’ leadership role in Active Archive.
• Tape Matters.    Customers are clear that tape will continue to play a crucial role well into the future by providing the safest, most cost-effective storage.  The LTO consortium agrees and has a committed LTO roadmap well into the future.
• Customer Relationships Matter.   Most importantly, as storage requirements evolve, customers need vendors who foster partnerships to help meet their evolving storage needs.   Customers need transparent dealings with sales, support and executives — and listed their personal relationships within Spectra Logic as one of the top reasons they selected us.  According to these TAP customers, Storage Magazine’s 2010 Quality Awards, and fiscal 2011 financial results, Spectra Logic is on the right track.

As I was bouncing around the country once again, I struck up a conversation with a complete stranger sitting next to me on the plane, which is my usual modus operandi.  Without knowing what industry I work in, he brought up the term "high performance computing" within the first minute of our friendly exchange.  Come to find out, the gentleman is a defense attorney to helicopter pilots involved in crashes. 

During the boarding process, he had his phone glued to his ear as he was engaged in a serious conversation with a couple of aeronautical engineers from Harvard. The engineers were conducting structural research on using multi-dimensional modeling techniques on super computers to help him build his case in determing why a helicopter recently crashed.  It became apparent to me that supercomputers continue to proliferate in our data-driven culture, and play a role in nearly every aspect of our everyday lives. 

Scientists, engineers and generally smart people continue to leverage the power of massive and distributed processers for calculation-intensive tasks such as quantum physics problems, weather forecasting, climateresearch, molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers and crystals), and physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes or helicopters in wind tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons, and research into nuclear fusion). 

You might be asking, what is the significance of all of this to me, to storage and to Spectra?  The way I see it, as supercomputers become more common, more and more data will continue to be created!  It also begs a few questions: Where does all that data go and how can it be preserved?  How can it be archived in a manner that makes it searchable and useable into the foreseeable future? As I ask that seemingly rhetorical question, I feel sort of like the famous Sweathog, Arnold Horshack, in Welcome Back, Kotter with my hand raised high in the air saying, “Ooh-ooh-ooooh, pick me Mister Kotter!"  Knowing what I know, I am ecstatic about the supercomputing revolution that we are experiencing because a large majority of the data generated, according to just about any of the more educated storage analysts you talk to, is going to be on tape.  And again, knowing what I know about Spectra and our track record for growth, profitability, and more importantly innovation over the past 32 years, our name is becoming synonymous with "enterprise" tape since we have the world's most scalable, and feature-rich tape system!  Even though I just revealed my age with the reference to Welcome Back, Kotter, I couldn't be more excited about the continued growth of the HPC market and the subsequent growth of the data explosion as a direct result of HPC.  If you can’t see the HPC market being a tremendous opportunity for continued tape growth because of the inherent characteristics of the most reliable, dense and economical media type, then "up your nose with a rubber hose!"  Of course, that is a line from my favorite Sweathog, Vinnie Barbarino!  Sorry if you are offended...

I recently returned from ISC 2011 in Hamburg, Germany the last ‘large’ trade show that Spectra Logic attended during our 2011 fiscal year. It seems I’ve been all over the world during our last FY – Las Vegas, San Diego, Amsterdam, Hamburg, New Orleans…the list goes on…

On my plane ride back I had some time to reflect on the events that Spectra has attended over the last twelve months and I wanted to share my recap with you – I’ve created a short list of the most important things on Spectra’s  event “wish list”..

1. Qualified Attendee Base – There is absolutely no substitute for a well-qualified audience. When show organizers put together an event, it’s essential they meet both the needs of end-users and industry sponsors/exhibitors. From the end-users’ point of view, worthwhile content, sessions, presentations and exhibiting vendors are important in deciding whether or not to travel to an event. From an industry sponsor/exhibitor standpoint, companies like Spectra want to see well-qualified registrants attending. Pre-qualification is always a bonus for us, however, we only tend to see this in day-long seminars versus large, weeklong conferences.

2. End-user Speaking Sessions – Spectra is a firm believer in education. Wherever possible we sign up for speaking engagements via event sponsorships, birds of a feather submissions, etc. We like having the capability to stand up in front of an audience and educate them on best practices – not necessarily on our products. We find it extremely important to first build trust with customers, and then introduce our product line.

3. Social Media Campaigns – Social media buzz around events on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is important to us – our social media reach is ever expanding and we like to reach out to event attendees in creative ways. We love to live tweet/host Facebook contests from our booth at events – for example we regularly giveaway iPad’s via event trivia contests on our social networks. Follow us at www.Twitter.com/spectralogicand fan us on www.facebook.com/spectralogicfor more examples.

4. Booth Hours – Long booth hours are okay – however, for smaller events networking opportunities are just as important as being able to display our equipment. We like face time and talk time – and sometimes having conversations in social settings versus in a booth can better facilitate conversations with end users.

5.  Customer Interaction – Plain and simple – having the opportunity to generate new business, visit with our existing customer base and create brand awareness is very important to any vendor attending/sponsoring a trade show.

ISC2011 was good in the aspect that our sponsorship package included a speaking engagement, and a “whisper” suite, a private room where we could hold private meetings. Booth visitors were of all flavors, and some had existing storage projects in place – exactly what we like to see. Hopefully more trade shows will trend in this direction. I’m looking forward to the upcoming ‘event season’!

Follow me on twitter @katiemaryjones

Between ESG and Clipper Group, one can generate an interesting discussion about the opportunity costs of powering archive storage on tape versus doing so on disk.  With the power savings available from tape archives, you could buy a lot of stuff.

For this exercise, let’s use ridiculously big numbers to see what we could buy with the money spent in power alone, just for archives.  The 2010 Digital Archive Market Forecast from ESG indicates there will be 79,151 PB of digital data archived by 2012 – next year.  By 2015, ESG expects that data mass to grow to 300,000 PB or 300,000,000 TB of data! 

The Clipper Group published its Clipper Notes in December 2010 providing insight into the difference in power costs between tape and disk.  The title of the article in question is, “In Search of the Long Term Archiving Solution – Tape Delivers Significant TCO Advantage over Disk”.  The article states that the cost of powering a disk archive is 238 times greater than that of tape.

Doing a wee bit of math with the Clipper data indicates the cost per TB of power stored on tape over the course of a year is roughly $1.04.  The Clipper folks calculated that the cost per TB stored on disk for a year is 238 times greater so let’s call it $246.70 per TB, just for grins.  Now the fun part.

If we multiply out the power cost per TB for both tape and disk relative to ESG’s archive forecast numbers for 2012, we get the following:

· Cost of power to store 79,151,000 TB of data on tape in 2012 = $82,317,040.  That’s a lot of beer.

· Cost of power to store 79,151,000 TB of data on disk in 2012 = $19,526,551,700.  That’s $19 followed by a “B”… as in billion.  Now we’re talking real money.  The kind only Uncle Sam spends.

Look further into the future at the power cost associated with archiving all the data ESG foresees and the digits become even more eye popping.  What’s more, these figures don’t factor in the escalating price of power over time.

· Cost of power to store 300,000,000 TB of data on tape in 2015 = $312,000,000.  You could buy a small fleet of yachts with that kind of coin.

· Cost of power to store 300,000,000 TB of data on disk in 2015.  Hold onto your hats folks… $74,010,000,000.  With a stash of cash like that you could buy the countries of Trinidad & Tobago ($26.4B GDP), Jamaica ($23.9B GDP), and the Bahamas ($8.9B GDP) for vacation purposes, then pick up a handful of other countries just to round out the collection – and still have money left over for that fleet of yachts.  Source: Wikipedia - so take the country GDP figures with a grain of salt.    

The point is this:  if you plan to archive large chunks of data for very long and do it only on disk, you’ll pay a lot of money for power.  If you elect instead to deploy an active archive using tape for much of that data, you can save a lot of money on power.  You may even save enough to pay for a vacation junket on your new yacht.

by Mark Weis, VP of Spectra Logic Federal

Spectra recently joined General Dynamics EDGE® Innovation Network, a collaborative, open-environment initiative enabling industry and academia, with government input, to work together to enhance the delivery cycle of new technologies and innovative capabilities to warfighters and first responders. Currently, there are several projects in development at six EDGE Innovation centers worldwide. The projects are intended to improve and enhance warfighter capabilities.

Pete Palmer, EDGE Innovation Network director, said, “The EDGE bridges gaps between end-user needs and current capabilities by promoting rapidly prototyped solutions that could close those gaps quickly. By applying the EDGE process, the government can quickly and cost-effectively review multiple options for users to evaluate in months rather than years.”

So where does Spectra Logic fit in? Spectra Logic Federal delivers data storage and archiving solutions to more than 200 agencies across the USA. Our storage expertise helps agencies solve unique Federal-specific challenges. Spectra’s products are extremely customizable; products in production today. By joining the EDGE Innovation Network, Spectra Logic can utilize EDGE labs to further develop leading-edge technology to meet the specific data storage needs and requests of EDGE end-users by tailoring our flexible storage products based on their hands-on lab experience.

For innovative companies with federal expertise like Spectra Logic, joining the EDGE innovation Network keeps us in sync with what our customers want now, and allows us to add new features in our products to suit these needs. EDGE allows small businesses to display their products in a lab environment, a preferred option for many Federal prospects prior to implementation.

Stay tuned to the Spectra Backup and Recover blog for future Federal updates related to our new EDGE membership and other activities.