Linear Tape-Open Archives

LTO Group Pushes Roadmap Out to Generation 14

September 21, 2022 Alex Woodie

Native capacities for Linear Tape-Open (LTO) cartridges will once again double with every successive generation, according to a new roadmap published this month by the group of companies behind the LTO spec.

The new roadmap published by IBM, HPE, and Quantum, which are the Technology Provider Companies (TPCs) behind the LTO program, show the LTO Ultrium format being pushed out four more generations. When LTO Gen 14 tapes hit the market – likely a decade from now or longer – they will have a native capacity of “up to 576TB,” and a compressed capacity of up to 1.44PB.

It’s been …
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Quantum to Help IBM Develop LTO-10

October 27, 2021 Alex Woodie

IBM and Quantum last week announced they have entered into a partnership to jointly develop the next generation of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology, LTO-10, which is currently under development and likely will come to market in 2024 or 2025.

The announcement was unusually terse in its wording. “Under the terms of the agreement,” Quantum stated in its October 19 press release, “Quantum will collaborate with IBM in its development of LTO-10 tape drives and media in order to accelerate time-to-market, capacity, and performance. The specific terms of the agreement are confidential and will not be disclosed.”

The fact that IBM …
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LTO-9 Drives and Cartridges Finally Get Out the Door

September 8, 2021 Alex Woodie

It’s been almost a year since the principals that make up the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program — IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Quantum — announced the specifications for LTO Ultrium 9 (LTO-9) tape cartridge and drive. This week, the companies involved in the LTO Program finally announced that they’re getting LTO-9 gear out the door.

With 18TB native capacity and data transfer rates of 400 MB per second — both of which go higher with 2.5-to-one compression turned on — the ninth generation of the LTO format is expected to be adopted by organizations that need to store …
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LTO-9 Specs Reveal Compromise

September 16, 2020 Alex Woodie

The three companies behind the linear tape-open (LTO) tape standard released the specifications for LTO-9 last week. Those looking for a doubling of capacity over LTO-8, which was the plan according to the group’s product roadmap, will be disappointed.

Tapes based on the just-released LTO-9 specification will be able to store 18TB without compression and 45TB of data with 2.5-to-1 compression turned on, the LTO Program announced last week.

Those capacities represent just a 50 percent increase over LTO-8’s specifications. However, according to the LTO Program roadmap published in 2017, the group had been targeting 30TB of native capacity and …
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‘Air Gap’ Your Data with Tape, LTO Group Says

April 18, 2018 Alex Woodie

Here’s one more reason why tape’s demise has been prematurely recorded: Tape helps to protect data by providing an “air gap” between live production systems and protected data. That’s according to a new report sponsored by the LTO group. In other news, IBM made an LTO announcement that’s pertinent to IBM i shops.

In a new white paper issued last week, IDC raised the specter of tape-based storage systems providing an air gap that is actively thwarting attempts by cybercriminals to compromise production systems, in those that would otherwise be vulnerable to ransomware attacks.

“Recently, tape has shown itself to …
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IBM Unveils LTO-8 Tape Drives

October 16, 2017 Alex Woodie

The not-so-long wait for the latest Linear Tape-Open gear is finally over, as members of the LTO Consortium last week unveiled their latest drives capacity of storing 30 TB of compressed data. Among the first consortium members unveiling product was IBM, which announced its first two LTO-8 Ultrium drives.

LTO-8 drives can store up to 12 TB of data on a single LTO-8 cartridge, and move data at rates up to 360 MB/sec. With 2.5-to-1 compression turned on, the capacity of LTO-8 drives jumps to 30 TB while the transfer rates increases to 900 MB/sec. That corresponds to a 100 …
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LTO Group Pushes Roadmap Out to Generation 14

Quantum to Help IBM Develop LTO-10

LTO-9 Drives and Cartridges Finally Get Out the Door

LTO-9 Specs Reveal Compromise

‘Air Gap’ Your Data with Tape, LTO Group Says

IBM Unveils LTO-8 Tape Drives

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