IBM Diamondback Tape Library - Up to 69.5PB with LTO-9 in compressed mode

IBM Corp. is extending its portfolio of data resilience solutions with the Diamondback tape library, a high-density archival storage solution that is physically air-gapped to help protect vs. ransomware and other cyber threats in hybrid cloud environments.

The Diamondback is for organizations needing to securely store hundreds of petabyte of data, both traditional and ‘new wave’ hyperscalers – global enterprises aggregating massive customer data sets. It provides long-term storage (27PB in an OCP-sized rack) with a smaller carbon footprint compared to flash or disk storage, and with a lower TCO.

“With data breaches and ransomware attacks now a constant threat, enterprises are increasingly turning to the data resilience provided by IBM Tape solutions,” said Scott Baker, VP and CMO, IBM Storage. “The IBM Diamondback Tape Library provides critical protection against a variety of threats, helping minimize data center floor space requirements and organizations’ carbon footprint. It’s part of the end-to-end data protection and security solution that IBM can deliver.”

“Driven by an explosion in data volume, ransomware, and increased regulatory and sustainability requirements, hyperscale cloud providers are among the biggest consumers of tape storage, and are predicted to drive tape capacity shipments to new levels in 2023,” said Phil Goodwin, research VP, IDC. “IBM’s Diamondback Tape Library is the company’s latest solution for both traditional and cloud hyperscale enterprises. It is designed to deliver on customers’ needs for scalability, sustainability and security with simplicity and self-service.”

Diamondback is designed to deliver 3 main benefits:

• Sustainability: It reduces power and cooling requirements, with a 97% lower carbon footprint vs. HD, as it sits idle in automated libraries consuming no energy until accessed. Its long-term endurance allows tape to store data for up to 30 years.
• Ransomware protection and cyber resiliency: Organizations WW are pressured to strengthen their defenses against malware and data breaches. Tape provides physically air-gapped isolation to increase resiliency against threats.
• Data capacity and storage costs: IBM tape is approximately one-quarter the total cost of HDD storage and public cloud archival services.

According to a recent IBM IBV study, 48% of CEOs responding across industries say increasing sustainability is one of the highest priorities for their organization in the next 2 to 3 years. However, 51% also cite sustainability as among their greatest challenges in that same timeframe.

The company’s sustainability strategy is driven by an approach that puts sustainability into action by advancing solutions that address climate change and support the transition to a low-carbon economy. As hyperscale cloud providers focus on reducing the environmental footprint of their facilities through lower power consumption, Diamondback is an ally in managing energy efficient infrastructures, built with the same security, scalability, and reliability that is the hallmark of IBM infrastructure.

The Diamondback provides cost-effective archival storage for the massive capacity demand of the zetabyte era, supporting vertical markets such as big data, analytics, cloud storage services, the IoT, healthcare, and life sciences. These organizations typically generate amounts of high-value unstructured data, much of which is stored as archives awaiting future reference, and can often benefit from an active archive implementation leveraging high capacity, low-cost tape systems.

The company recently announced the transition of Red Hat storage to IBM storage, helping deliver a consistent experience from edge-to-core-to-cloud. It also recently announced new cyber resilience products, including Spectrum Sentinel for SAP HANA and Spectrum Protect Plus Online Services for Salesforce. When combined with expanded Spectrum Archive support for direct access to file and directories stored on tape, these innovations demonstrate the firm’s position in the storage market.

The Specs are significant: 14 LTO-9 Tape Drives with 1,548 tape slots for a total raw capacity of 27PB on 8 square feet.With LTO-9 compression enabled and a ratio of 2.5:1, the capacity reaches 96.5PB.  Designed with an independent frame, each rack is autonomous and is not linked to others for robotic circulation or movement.  Tape belong to a frame and stay in the frame, being read are written by local tape drives.