BCC Adds LTO to iSeries Tape Offerings

by Alex Woodie

The company is now shipping LTO tape drives in its line of Maxback robotic tape libraries and subsystems, including single- and double-drive versions of the Maxback 9580 Tape Subsystem, and the Maxback 4575 Tape Library, which comes in several versions and scales up to eight LTO tape drives. All of BCC's LTO tape drives are available in SCSI and Fibre Channel versions.

The single-drive version of BCC's Maxback 9580 Tape Subsystem features a native 100 GB capacity and a data transfer rate of 54 GB per hour. Using compression technologies, LTO Ultrium cartridges can hold up to 300 GB and provide data transfer rates of up to 162 GB per hour. A maximum data transfer rate of 324 GB per hour can be achieved in the two-drive version, using "striping," or writing to two drives simultaneously. BCC's 9580 Tape Subsystems range in price from $7,600 to $17,000.

BCC Maxback 4575 Tape Library comes in several models that contain from one to eight LTO tape drives, house up to 264 LTO cartridges, and provide up to 79 TB of storage. The 4575 features data transfer rates of up to 1.3 TB per hour, supports simultaneous writing to multiple magazines for duplicate backup tapes, and can be attached to up to 16 heterogeneous host systems. Pricing for BCC's 4575 Tape Libraries ranges from $13,250 to $151,800.

BCC's LTO tape drives are manufactured by Seagate Technology and IBM as part of an OEM agreement with BCC. BCC then adds its own controllers and microcode, which enables BCC's LTO drives to be used to make duplicate backups and to be shared by disparate servers, including the iSeries.

LTO is a relatively young tape standard that was developed jointly by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Seagate Technology in the late 1990s. The goal of the LTO project was to deliver a licensable open standard that addressed performance, scalability, and interoperability concerns in the midrange and enterprise storage arenas. The group actually delivered two standards: the Accelis format, which provides faster access times, and the Ultrium format, which provides higher storage capacities. Today, most of the commercially available LTO products, such as BCC's LTO Maxback offerings, are based on the Ultrium format.

The first LTO Ultrium tape drives started hitting the streets in September 2000. IBM first brought LTO tape technology to its OS/400 platform in December 2000. Today, IBM offers a range of LTO drives, autoloaders, and libraries, from the single IBM 3580 Ultrium Tape Drive, which starts at $5,175, to the IBM 3584 Ultrascalable Tape Library, which scales to 72 tape drives.

Although enterprise customers that need exceptionally fast read and restore rates may be better served by installing Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) or Digital Linear Tape (DLT) drives, BCC had several valid reasons for delivering LTO technology, said David Breisacher, president of BCC.

First, BCC wanted to put pricing pressure on IBM. LTO technology is being pushed pretty heavily by IBM into the AS/400 marketplace, and therefore the base of LTO users is growing, says Breisacher. Like it does with its iSeries disk offerings, BCC is selling its LTO technology for about 25 percent less than comparable IBM LTO tape systems.

Breisacher cited two additional features of his company's LTO drives that he says shows the technology has matured, including the LTO drives "mirroring" feature, in which multiple backup copies can be simultaneously created from a single application, and the fact that LTO is SAN-ready. BCC's LTO libraries can be partitioned to work with multiple host systems, including AS/400s, RS/6000s, and Windows and Linux servers.

For more information about the LTO standard, visit the LTO' Web site, at www.lto-technology.com. For more information on BCC's LTO offerings, visit the company's Web site, at www.bcctech.com.