• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • IBM Boasts of Big Tape Breakthrough

    August 9, 2017 Alex Woodie

    Reports of tape’s death have been greatly exaggerated in recent years. But if IBM Research can turn a technological breakthrough it made with Sony in the lab into an actual product, tape will remain relevant for decades to come.

    IBM last week announced that it set a new record for areal density on magnetic tape when it achieved 201 gigabits per square inch with a prototype for a new “sputtered” magnetic tape format, which it says is 20 times the areal density used in current state-of-the-art commercial tape drives. The achievement could enable the production of a tape cartridge that can store 330 TB of uncompressed data, Big Blue says.

    By comparison, the current breadwinner in IBM’s tape lineup, LTO-7, sports a native (uncompressed) capacity of 6 TB per cartridge, while its high-end tape drive, the IBM TS1155, a descendent of the enterprise Magstar 3590 line, can squeeze 15 TB of uncompressed data onto a single JD tape cartridge. Both the TS1155 and LTO-7 drives have areal densities on the order of about 1 Gb per square inch.

    IBM’s storage breakthrough was achieved with its partner, the Sony Storage Media Solutions division of Sony, with whom IBM has been working for several years. IBM has also achieved tape breakthroughs with another Japanese vendor, Fujifilm, with whom it demonstrated the capability to push LTO’s native capacity past 150 TB back in 2015.

    The partners developed several new technologies to achieve the density and capacity breakthroughs of the new sputtered format, including a new 48 nanometer tunneling magneto-resistive (TMR) head that can write at 13 times the density of the TS1155 drives; new servo control technologies that can deliver head positioning that is accurate down to 7 nanometers; new signal-processing algorithms for use with the 48 nm TMR head; and new low-friction tape head technology for use with very smooth tape media.

    IBM’s new sputtered media tape material can be written at accuracies down to 7nm.

    If the new sputtered tape format makes its way into an actual product – or more likely, if one or more of the technological breakthroughs that IBM and Sony demonstrated last week get picked up at some point in the future in a different product development program – then it could help to change the economics of cloud storage.

    At least, that’s according to IBM Fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou, who is apparently quite bullish on the possibility of tape drives to replace spinning disk for storing petabytes worth of archive data in cloud data centers.

    “Tape has traditionally been used for video archives, back-up files, replicas for disaster recovery, and retention of information on premise, but the industry is also expanding to off-premise applications in the cloud,” Eleftheriou says. “While sputtered tape is expected to cost a little more to manufacture than current commercial tape that uses Barium ferrite (BaFe), the potential for very high capacity will make the cost per TB very attractive, making this technology practical for cold storage in the cloud.”

    Tape’s continued relevance could disrupt the economics of storage. In fact, according to IBM executives that spoke with IT Jungle last year, IBM is moving forward with the assumption that the days are numbered for traditional spinning disk. In the future, organizations will use Flash-based solid state disks (SSDs) for hot data and tape for cold data, a setup dubbed FLAPE.

    Source: IBM

    “Why would anybody buy a spinning disk that has moving parts and is destined to fail, when you can buy something that has no moving parts and is proven to be more reliable, and uses less power?” Gary Albert, business line executive for IBM Storage, told us last year.

    Thanks to its cost and capacity advantages over hard disks, tape continues to sell very well. IBM is reaping the rewards of tape’s renaissance, and is the number one provider of tape drives in the industry. According to the IDC, IBM’s market share increased from 36 percent to 43 percent from 2015 to 2016.

    “Tape continues to be the lowest-cost storage media in the industry,” Jeff Barber, vice president offering management for IBM Storage, writes in a blog post. “It makes tremendous economic sense in environments characterized by petabytes moving to exabytes. It’s not a surprise that large-scale cloud services providers and global enterprises have embraced tape as a means to store large volumes of data at an affordable price.”

    Tape’s presence in IBM i data centers has decreased in recent years. However, it still sports a significant foothold.

    In HelpSystems IBM i Marketplace Survey for 2017, one-third of organizations report tape as their main form of disaster recovery. That’s down from about 38 percent the year before. The main culprit in tape’s decline appears to be high availability solutions, which grew from 44 percent of IBM i shops saying it was their main form of DR in 2016, to nearly 49 percent in HelpSystems’ 2017 report.

    RELATED STORIES

    Tape: It Ain’t Dead Yet

    Imagine There’s No Spinning Disk (It’s Easy If You Try)

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: FLAPE, Flash-based solid state disks, IBM i, Sputtered Media Tape, SSDs

    Sponsored by
    Chilli IT

    Chilli is one of the UKs leading IBM support and management providers with 20 years’ experience in the power and storage industry. Our bespoke solutions for maintenance, security and infrastructure delivers a service which is cost effective, increases productivity and enhances efficiency. Our ethical approach and unrivalled knowledge has secured business partnerships with blue-chip companies in the technology, retail, banking and travel sectors.

    As an IBM Business Partner, we provide you with the peace of mind that you are working in partnership with a company accredited to the highest standard. Our team of experts have worked together for many years and deliver projects which include consolidation, High Availability, Operating System upgrades; and backup and recovery installations.

    Contact us to see how we can help your business with IBM support and management.

    www.chilli-it.co.uk

    info@chilli–it.co.uk

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    SoftLanding Gives Supermon A New Look What’s Old Is New Again: The IBM i Means Business

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 27 Issue: 51

This Issue Sponsored By

  • Fresche Solutions
  • Maxava
  • COMMON
  • Rocket Software
  • Manta Technologies

Table of Contents

  • IBM Boasts of Big Tape Breakthrough
  • SoftLanding Gives Supermon A New Look
  • Subscription-Based Change Management Added To IBM i MSP Menu
  • Four Hundred Monitor, August 9
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 19, Numbers 29 Through 31

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • IBM i 7.3 TR12: The Non-TR Tech Refresh
  • IBM i Integration Elevates Operational Query and Analytics
  • Simplified IBM i Stack Bundling Ahead Of Subscription Pricing
  • More Price Hikes From IBM, Now For High End Storage
  • Big Blue Readies Power10 And IBM i 7.5 Training for Partners
  • IBM Delivers More Out-of-the-Box Security with IBM i 7.5
  • Groundhog Day For Malware
  • IBM i Community Reacts to IBM i 7.5
  • Four Hundred Monitor, May 11
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 19

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2022 IT Jungle

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.