• LTO Group Pushes Roadmap Out to Generation 14

  September 21, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Native capacities for Linear Tape-Open (LTO) cartridges will once again double with every successive generation, according to a new roadmap published this month by the group of companies behind the LTO spec.

  The new roadmap published by IBM, HPE, and Quantum, which are the Technology Provider Companies (TPCs) behind the LTO program, show the LTO Ultrium format being pushed out four more generations. When LTO Gen 14 tapes hit the market – likely a decade from now or longer – they will have a native capacity of “up to 576TB,” and a compressed capacity of up to 1.44PB.

  It’s been …

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• Shipped Tape Capacity Up 40 Percent, LTO Program Says

  April 27, 2022 Alex Woodie

  LTO tape providers shipped 148 exabytes of total capacity in 2021, representing a 40 percent increase over the previous year, the LTO Program announced last week. The number shows how far data growth bounced back following the slowdown during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

  The total amount of compressed storage capacity delivered to customers jumped from the previous record of 114 EB in 2019, according to the LTO Program. The shipped capacity figure fell to 105 EB in 2020, an 8 percent drop from 2019.

  “Despite the significant business disruptions and uncertainty in 2021, LTO tape …

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• In The IBM i Trenches With: LaserVault

  March 21, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When somebody says they have been doing the same job for three or four decades, that is a big deal in the 21^st century because that kind of long-term employment is just not something anyone counts on. In the OS/400 and IBM i market, such constancy and longevity is, well, normal. Unremarkable. Expected. Good.

  So it is with Brad Jensen, the founder and chief executive officer of Electronic Storage Corporation, a company that is perhaps best known for its LaserVault virtual tape library software, but since the company was founded in 1989 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it …

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• New LTO 9 Gear, SAN Switch On Tap From IBM

  November 29, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops facing a storage crunch may be interested in new tape products unveiled by IBM last week, including a new LTO 9 tape drive and LTO 9 compatibility for an existing tape autoloader and an existing tape library. Big Blue also announced LTO 9 compatibility for an existing storage enclosure, and a new 48-port c-type switch for connecting SAN environments.

  IBM’s LTO fun starts with the IBM TS2290 SAS Tape Drive Model H9S, a half-height drive based on the new LTO 9 Ultrium specification. The TS2290 connects to hosts – including Power servers running IBM i, AIX, …

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• Quantum to Help IBM Develop LTO-10

  October 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM and Quantum last week announced they have entered into a partnership to jointly develop the next generation of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology, LTO-10, which is currently under development and likely will come to market in 2024 or 2025.

  The announcement was unusually terse in its wording. “Under the terms of the agreement,” Quantum stated in its October 19 press release, “Quantum will collaborate with IBM in its development of LTO-10 tape drives and media in order to accelerate time-to-market, capacity, and performance. The specific terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.”

  The fact that IBM …

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• LTO-9 Drives and Cartridges Finally Get Out the Door

  September 8, 2021 Alex Woodie

  It’s been almost a year since the principals that make up the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program — IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Quantum — announced the specifications for LTO Ultrium 9 (LTO-9) tape cartridge and drive. This week, the companies involved in the LTO Program finally announced that they’re getting LTO-9 gear out the door.

  With 18TB native capacity and data transfer rates of 400 MB per second — both of which go higher with 2.5-to-one compression turned on — the ninth generation of the LTO format is expected to be adopted by organizations that need to store …

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• M81 Speeds Backups with Flash for i

  February 3, 2021 Alex Woodie

  M81, a French independent software vendor (ISV) that develops IBM i software, recently announced a new release of Flash for i, a utility that uses IBM FlashCopy and EMC SnapShot technology to clone an IBM i disk volume in just two minutes. With version 4.0 out the door and a new partnership with an American company, M81 is looking to expands its operations in the United States.

  Flash for i is an innovative utility designed to provide an IBM i-centric way to manage the FlashCopy and Snapshot commands that IBM and Dell EMC bring to the table with their enterprise …

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• FalconStor Offers ProtecTIER Migration Deal to IBM i Shops

  October 28, 2020 Alex Woodie

  FalconStor Software is ramping up a new program to help IBM i shops migrate away from their IBM ProtecTIER virtual tape library (VTL) devices, which IBM has killed. The migration program essentially provides an extra 12 months of support for ProtecTIER devices for $999 per month, giving IBM i shops more time to make the switch to FalconStor’s own StorSafe offering.

  On February 13, 2018, IBM announced a statement of direction to cease support for various ProtecTIER hardware devices and the software that runs on them. IBM’s plan called for it to stop selling the devices in in June 2018, …

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• LTO-9 Specs Reveal Compromise

  September 16, 2020 Alex Woodie

  The three companies behind the linear tape-open (LTO) tape standard released the specifications for LTO-9 last week. Those looking for a doubling of capacity over LTO-8, which was the plan according to the group’s product roadmap, will be disappointed.

  Tapes based on the just-released LTO-9 specification will be able to store 18TB without compression and 45TB of data with 2.5-to-1 compression turned on, the LTO Program announced last week.

  Those capacities represent just a 50 percent increase over LTO-8’s specifications. However, according to the LTO Program roadmap published in 2017, the group had been targeting 30TB of native capacity and …

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• LTO-8 Tapes To Finally Ship in 4Q

  August 26, 2019 Alex Woodie

  A long-running patent dispute between Sony and Fujifilm has been settled and shipments of LTO-8 tape media will finally become generally available in the United States in the fourth quarter, the companies involved in the dispute have announced.

  While IBM and other companies have been shipping LTO-8 drives for well over a year, customers around the world have not been able to use the LTO-8 tapes designed to work with them. That’s because delivery of LTO-8 tapes has been held up due to a patent infringement lawsuit raging in US Federal Court between Sony and Fujifilm, which are …

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