Tape still useful in world of big data
Peri Grover notes that a blend of storage media will continue to suit most customer organisations
Most of the digital data that exists in the world today has been generated in the past two years.
The advent of social media, digital and video uploads and downloads, Google, emails, texts, online transactions, mobile phones and GPS have all played a part – and these data vehicles have an expanding outlook in terms of use and consumption.
Many organisations are therefore confronted with the challenge of having to store ever-increasing amounts of data to maintain and grow their business while complying with regulation.
Tape storage addresses all these concerns. While much attention has been focused on developments in disk, tape technology remains an important part of the IT infrastructure. Tape is also playing an influential part in big data and cloud computing.
We have been seeking to reinforce tape's big data credentials. Tape has both cost effectiveness and media longevity, and you can verify the integrity of data stored on it. Continued innovation has improved tape's capacity, speed, and ease of use.
The standardisation of Linear Tape Open (LTO) technology has married capacity, speed and efficiency with powerful data management capabilities. Ten years ago, tape drives delivered a mere 6MB/s transfer speed and 40GB cartridge capacity. LTO-6 tape offers throughput of up to 1.3TB per hour per drive and up to 6.25TB of storage per cartridge.
In addition, data cartridges are durable and portable, so they can be shipped all over the world for offsite storage or data sharing.
Tape is also the only viable offering for archive-tier data. And it can now have disk-like drag-and-drop functionality.
Most businesses use a blend of media to meet all their storage goals in the most cost-effective, seamless way possible. Tape's role in the cloud will also be significant, according to industry marketing collateral I have read.
Peri Grover is director of product marketing at Overland Storage