1.3 Cents/GB When Using LTO-6, Said LTO Program

The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), HP, IBM and Quantum, announced that LTO generation 6 tape has reached a cost-per-gigabyte of 1.3 cents based on the current market price of tape media. (Assuming LTO-6 cartridge price of $80 based on a pricing survey of more than two dozen websites offering LTO-6 cartridges and assuming 2.5:1 compressed capacity of a single cartridge. Actual prices may vary.)

“LTO technology continues to be the most cost-effective way to store significant amounts of data for the long term,” said Eric Bassier, senior director, product group, Quantum Corporation. “It’s dependable, compatible, portable, and easy to access with LTFS. When you factor in TCO – acquisition cost as well as power, cooling, and management costs – LTO tape continues to be the best storage medium for archiving and long term retention of valuable data.”

When all factors are taken into account, LTO tape storage technology continues to be the most cost-effective solution for storage managers worldwide. In A Comparative TCO Study: VTLs and Physical Tape by the Enterprise Strategy Group, results showed that even a data dedupe VTL was two to four times more costly than an LTO tape solution.

The Clipper Group also found that the average disk-based solution costs 26 times the TCO for an average LTO tape-based solution in 2013 Revisiting the Search for Long-Term Storage.

“LTO solutions provide some very compelling cost advantages over disk-based solutions,” according to David Reine, senior analyst, The Clipper Group. “When you look at the TCO over a long retention period, including storage space, energy use and equipment, tape clearly is the most cost-effective archiving solution.”

As storage managers consider factors such as equipment, media, maintenance, energy costs and floor space, LTO tape addresses those needs, offering an energy-efficient and cost-effective method for storing data.

LTO-6 specifications support tape cartridge storage compressed capacity of up to 6.25TB, more than twice the compressed capacity over the previous generation, and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 400MB/s for over 1.4TB of storage performance an hour per drive. As with previous generations, LTO-6 drives will provide backward compatibility with the ability to read and write LTO-5 cartridges and read LTO-4 cartridges.

The LTO Program will be presenting and demonstrating LTO technology to a range of data managers at NAB in Las Vegas, NV, SNIA Data Conference in Santa Clara, CA, IBC in Amsterdam, ASIS in Atlanta, GA, and Supercomputing in New Orleans, LA.