Unraveling Tape's Future

Despite a weak second quarter, it seems like every major player in the storage business is going gaga over tape these days. Even EMC, which for years has been saying tape was dead, has released its first broad suite of tape-automation products. The storage giant conceded that tape is a necessary part of an ILM strategy, for everything from backup and retrieval to archiving data to meet the regulatory compliance requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, to name a few.

"More and more, disk technology is now displacing what was once the purview of tape," acknowledges Howard Elias, executive vice president of corporate marketing for EMC's office of technology, at the company's annual analyst conference. "That being said, there is still a marketplace for tape and tape emulation."

EMC, ADIC Unite

Like a growing crop of virtual tape libraries offered from the likes of IBM, Overland Storage, Quantum and FalconStor, virtual tape solutions take data backed up on nearline disk and move it to tape (see "Big Blue Unites Tape With Disk," May 17, page 52). The process is deemed efficient because of the faster data-transfer rates of archiving to disk, which also reduces the chance of a failed backup. The accepted reliability of Serial ATA drives, combined with the lowest costs ever, also are making virtual tape solutions viable for backup and recovery.

While emulating tape on disk is emerging as a popular way to expedite the backup and recovery process, EMC came to the conclusion that it needed the real thing. So it inked a deal with ADIC to resell its Scalar tape libraries. In return, ADIC will package EMC's Clariion CX networked storage system as part of its Pathlight VX virtual tape solution. EMC's tape offering will include ADIC's LTO-based Scalar 24, Scalar 100, Scalar i2000 and Scalar 10K tape libraries. The Scalar libraries include integrated SAN connectivity, can be configured to support capacity on-demand, and have a management interface for monitoring and alerting. ADIC also offers robotics and controllers for larger-scale implementations.

Still, some question whether ADIC is suited for the largest of enterprises where EMC has its foothold. When it comes to tape-library automation, IBM and StorageTek are viewed as the two leaders at the very high end. "I don't see ADIC going into the large enterprise--their libraries aren't going to cut the mustard," says Mark Stamper, an account executive for Alliance Technology Group, a storage integrator based in Hanover, Md. Lance Bruell, director of marketing at MTI, which sells primarily EMC storage products, disagrees. "We actually began looking at ADIC before they signed up with EMC, and I think they have the right product set to take us forward," says Bruell, who also sells Quantum tape products.

Nevertheless, EMC's push has been just the tip of the iceberg of late. A number of leaders in the tape world are bringing to market new tape cartridges and automation libraries aimed at boosting performance and lowering customers' cost of management. Perhaps that's why, after three consecutive years of declines, tape sales are now realizing double-digit gains, despite the recent retrenching among some key suppliers, including StorageTek, Overland Storage and Quantum. More specifically, overall revenue for tape technology will increase more than 13 percent this year, totaling $2.1 billion, according to a recent study by Ojai, Calif.-based Freeman Reports, which forecasts tape revenue to reach $3.4 billion in the next five years.

"It looks like there is no stopping tape," says Robert Abraham, author of the report and an expert on tape technology. "It has really been on the move in terms of capacity, performance, even reliability. And costs have been greatly improved."

Although proponents of disk technology like to point out that low-end disk capacity can be had for as little as 1 cent per megabyte, it doesn't come close to the cost-effectiveness of tape. "If you are dealing with large amounts of data, it's still 10 times cheaper than the next cheapest disk alternatives," says Charlie Andrews, IBM's director of product marketing for tape storage.

Upping the Ante

Price/performance improvements associated with tape are most noteworthy for three key formats: LTO, DLT/SDLT and Sony's SAIT. According to the Freeman Reports forecast, revenue for LTO drives this year will reach $886 million, while DLT/SDLT-based systems will reach $559 million. AIT, by comparison, will garner only $19 million in revenue, up from $5 million last year. As we look at what's new with each format, it bears noting that the former two account for the vast majority of tape systems shipped.

LTO is clearly the fastest-growing tape format in recent years. Having first hit the market a few years ago, LTO is a standard format developed by a consortium of vendors led by HP, IBM and Certance (the tape division spun off from Seagate).

The second generation of LTO systems came out early last year. LTO 2-based tape drives have a capacity of 400 GB and a compressed data transfer rate of 40 MBps to 80 MBps. The vendor consortium is currently putting the final touches on the LTO 3 spec, which is expected to double that capacity--800 GB and 80 MBps to 160 MBps, respectively. Observers say LTO 3-based systems should be available to channel partners by early next year.

Meanwhile, Quantum provides the vast majority of tape drives based on the competing SDLT format. Proponents of LTO argue that SDLT is proprietary, though other vendors, such as Tandberg, offer SDLT-compliant drives. Quantum's SDLT 600 supports 600 GB compressed (300 uncompressed) and a data rate of 72 MBps. Next year, Quantum plans to release a drive that has double that capacity--1.2 TB compressed (600 uncompressed).

Sony is also rolling out its next-generation iteration of tape drives based on its AIT format. The drives support up to 200 GB of native storage capacity (520 GB with 2.6:1 compression) and a native data rate of 24 MBps.

In addition, under increasing pressure to meet compliance requirements, a growing number of drives are supporting write once, read many (WORM) support. That is important as companies are being asked to show they are not altering data after archiving it. Quantum, for one, has begun offering firmware called DLT-Ice, which lets customers of its existing SDLT 600 drives automatically configure them as WORM-only.

"It really consolidates IT shops so they don't have to have multiple technologies to add worm functionality," says Steven Berens, Quantum's senior director of product marketing and strategy.

IBM also recently brought WORM technology for its TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592. Every 3592 drive will come WORM-enabled, says IBM's Andrews. StorageTek, too, has offered WORM capability in its 9840 drives since July 2000 and added it to its T9940B drives last year.

Libraries Take On More Automation

There's also no shortage of new tape libraries these days, from Overland Storage, for example, which recently released a model with an iSCSI interface, to HP and Exabyte, which unveiled a slew of new systems back in April. Exabyte says its new VXA-2 PacketLoader tape autoloader has become the fastest-selling automation product in its 18-year history.

At the top of the automated tape library totem pole, StorageTek says it is redefining tape automation with the SL8500, the first product of a new platform that is modular and based on new robotics capability supporting up to 1,000 mounts per hour. The system scales from 1,448 to more than 300,000 cartridge slots and allows for a mixture of SDLC, LTO and StorageTek's T9840C and T9940B drives. The SL8500 also supports mixed computing environments, including mainframe, Unix, Windows and Linux systems.

"You don't have to partition your libraries, so your ability to get much more efficiency out of your libraries because of the way it's architected is huge," says Patrick Martin, StorageTek's chairman and CEO. "It's the cornerstone of our technology." In addition to offering the SL8500 through its own network of storage integrators, the company has OEM'd the system to Sun, which will sell it through its own channels.

StorageTek partners are already seeing interest in the new system, in part due to its ability to consolidate multiple platforms, as well as for the more practical reason that older systems are coming off lease soon, Alliance Technology Group's Stamper notes. "This box is impressive," he says.

StorageTek has also unveiled a scaled-down modular version that supports 30 cartridge slots and is designed to scale modularly to 500. Unlike the SL8500, the SL500 initially will support LTO cartridges only with SDLT support planned in a future version, the company says. It will run in Unix and Windows shops.

Stamper says he was initially more skeptical about that product, noting there are numerous midrange tape libraries from the likes of ADIC, Exabyte and Overland.

"I thought it was just another me-too product," Stamper says. "It looked like [what] everybody else had, but after seeing some more technical information on it, it seems like it's very well-engineered."