LTO-9 Arriving as Specs Available

The LTO Program technology provider companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM Corp. and Quantum Corp., announced the specs of LTO Ultrium format gen 9 (LTO-9), which are now available for licensing.

 
They are designed to increase tape cartridge capacity from the previous gen, with capacities of up to 45TB per cartridge when compressed.
 
They include previously introduced features, such as multi-layer security support via hardware-based encryption, WORM functionality and support for LTFS. They include backward read and write compatibility with LTO-8 cartridges. 
 
These features help LTO tape maintain its position of a powerful, scalable, and adaptable open tape storage format that can provide more confidence for safe and secured offline storage, particularly in helping to prevent the impact of increasing cyberattacks. Offline storage – which creates an inherent “air-gap” that protects data from online predators – helps mitigate increasingly ransomware and malware threats that may corrupt live, backup, and archive data.
 
LTO media has doubled in capacity approximately every 2/3 years since the first gen launched 20 years ago. For LTO-9, the LTO Program elected to balance the cost and benefit of technology within the spec offering a 18TB tape cartridge – a 50% increase in capacity from the previous gen – to address the current market for storage space. A new roadmap has been established with the goal to double capacity in each gen moving forward.

“We are very excited at the future for LTO technology, and with increased capacity we are catering to the current and future market requirements for storage“, said Chris Powers, VP of collaborative platforms development and big data, HPE. “We continue to improve the core technology every gen, as tape is one of the most reliable and cost-effective storage solutions to retain data while keeping it safe from ransomware and other cyber-attacks.“.

In experiments in the IBM Research Zurich Lab, researchers have achieved 330TB of uncompressed data on a palm-sized tape cartridge – a record volume that is equivalent to about 330 million books.

According to the INSIC tape technology roadmap, the potential for tape technology to meet robust capacity predictions over the next decade shows a clear advantage to HDD technologies

Current LTO and enterprise tape drives operate at areal densities that are about 2 orders of magnitude less than the latest HDD. That means it is possible to continue increasing capacity of tape technology at historical rates for at least the next decade.

For instance, recent 18TB disk product must use 1,022Gb/in² vs. the latest 18TB LTO-9 cartridge that only uses 12Gb/in². That means that LTO-9 tape can achieve the same capacity with only 1/85th of the areal density than that of same capacity disk. Tape has much more recording area compared to disk and will be able to expand further in the years to come, according to INSIC. The combination of tape area and the ability to increase areal densities is the main reason why tape will continue to enjoy the 40%/year capacity growth.

“Given its long history of use and a solid path for future innovation, tape still has a significant role to play in the modern data center and in hybrid topologies,” says Christophe Bertrand, senior analyst, ESG. “Tape’s role is shifting, which further enhances its value. Other than archiving massive data sets for active archives or longer retention at low cost, tape has the ability to create an isolated and “air-gapped” layer. This emerging use case is perfect for keeping data out of reach of cyber-attackers.”

The latest gen of LTO tape technology, LTO-8, supports tape cartridge storage compressed capacity of up to 30TB.