The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) program and its Technology Provider Companies, HP, IBM and Quantum, today celebrated the 10-year anniversary of LTO tape drive availability. Since 2000, LTO products have dramatically changed the storage industry by providing a powerful and practical tape technology that is a core component of successful data storage best practices with more than 3.5 million drives shipped worldwide, according to a recent study by IDC.* Additionally, there have been over 150 million cartridge shipments, according to Santa Clara Consulting, helping to establish the LTO Ultrium format as a highly dependable and reliable data protection technology.
“The LTO Ultrium format has become the data protection tape technology of choice because it delivers a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format,” said Sanjay Tripathi, Director and Business Line Executive, IBM Data Protection and Archive Systems. “The formula for success has many attributes including multiple sources of drives and media, innovation with WORM tape, encryption, and a new file system, and a roadmap with a vision for future technology needs with high capacity and high performance at an attractive investment.”
In 1998, HP, IBM and Seagate (whose participation was acquired by Quantum) set out to develop an “open format” technology so that users would have multiple sources of compatible tape products and media. Each company provided expert knowledge of customer needs and complementary intellectual property that allowed for delivery of a best-of-breed tape technology and a strong foundation for data interchange. The result was the Linear Tape-Open format. Other companies have since participated in this tape industry opportunity through the open licensing process.
“The LTO program is a tremendous success story,” said Robert Amatruda, research director for data protection and recovery at IDC. “LTO products have been a core part of storage solutions for the past decade and continue to be at the forefront of the tape storage industry.”
Tape continues to be a key component of backup and archive storage infrastructures. It is widely used to address multiple layers of protection, including the retention of offsite and offline copies of data to avoid the impact of intentional or accidental data corruption that can occur with on-line copies. Additionally, the latest LTO tape drive products provide native AES 256-bit encryption to help protect data at rest and while tape cartridges are in transit.
The LTO program recently released the 5th generation of the LTO Ultrium format, which offers 1.5TB of native capacity and up to 140 MB/sec native transfer rates, and now provides an innovative partitioning feature that can enable new tape uses. This partitioning feature includes a new file system called Linear Tape File System (LTFS) that allows access to data on LTO tapes in a manner similar to that of a removable hard disk drive and offers directory tree access to tape files. LTO 5 tape provides a simple and convenient way to store, access and protect short and long term data, video and audio files. The LTO Ultrium format is the data protection tape technology of choice because it delivers a powerful, scalable and adaptable open tape format exemplified in LTO 5 technology.
The LTO program also announced earlier this year that it had extended its product roadmap through generation 8 allowing for compressed cartridge capacities of up to 8 TB for generation 6, 16 TB for generation 7 and 32 TB for generation 8, helping users to store more data in less space and address cost control objectives.
How to License LTO Ultrium Technology
The LTO program has historically offered several different license packages – from variations of enhanced packages that provide the specifications and intellectual property licenses to manufacture LTO Ultrium products, to basic packages providing LTO format specifications.
Buyers seeking LTO Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the LTO Ultrium format compliance verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges. Storage and media manufacturers interested in licensing LTO formats may obtain information by contacting the LTO program through www.ultrium.com/contact.php.
About Linear Tape-Open (LTO)
The LTO Ultrium format is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and continuously enhanced by technology providers HP, IBM and Quantum (and their predecessors) to help address the growing demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments. This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.
The LTO Ultrium format has a well-defined roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. Format compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO program. LTO Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensed basis. For additional information on LTO, visit www.trustlto.com and the LTO Program Web site at www.ultrium.com.
* Source: IDC Worldwide Tape QView, June 2010.
Note: Linear Tape-Open, LTO, the LTO logo, Ultrium, and the Ultrium logo are registered trademarks of HP, IBM and Quantum in the US and other countries.
Contacts:
Geoff Mordock, 310-482-4274