Data Economics: LTO-9 Technology Optimizing Data Value
Focus on Data
The economic value of enterprise data
is inexplicably tied to the growth of analytic
capability. The proliferation of data is
reflected in the numerous global studies
conducted, indicating that data production is
growing at rates as high as 35% per annum.
According to IDC and ESG Research
studies, as much as 2% of the yearly created
data is retained with 65%
of that becoming untouched longterm
retained data each year. The economic,
social and governance (ESG) impacts
of retained data are a growing concern
for data centers and mid-to-large size
enterprises. This study outlines a 10-year
model of the expected benefits using
LTO-9 tape technology, modelled
in a direct compare of utilizing an all hard
disk drive solution and with an all-cloud
storage solution. The total ESG benefits
will also be compared as we discuss the
broader benefits of LTO-9 technology.
Reality of Data Retention
The reality of data retention is that
it is a continuously growing
responsibility for every organization.
Where active data storage can be
and often is transient, data that is
not deleted from the active state
becomes stored data, growing
with every passing year, creating
the data “archive”. Management
of archive data entails custodianship,
budget management, technology
modernization planning and
expiration planning.
Amongst these challenges, the least
understood and most controversial
is the expiration planning (EP).
EP should be simple established
requirements by internal or
regulatory entities allowing for
the deletion of data after a given
period. As an example, United
Kingdom (UK) National Healthcare
System (NHS) records management
code of practice¹ indicates that most
health and care records are kept for
8 years after the treatment, although
there are always exceptions such
as General Practice records (GP).
After the 8-year retention period,
data can be deleted, except data
which may have value in research.
This ‘tagline’ results in very little
data being deleted in modern
infrastructures. Eight years of records
now becomes 10-30 years of
records, with those records growing
exponentially with the population
of patients due to an increase
in digital technology.
The economics of data becomes
the primary driver for IT
professionals, this includes cost
of ownership, technology refresh
management and the growing focus
on carbon impact of the chosen
storage technologies.
Secure Data Guardianship
Secure Data Guardianship, a more
universal term for data protection,
cyber resiliency, cyber defense and
backup and recovery, has been
the singular most important focus
for data in the past 2 decades.
Yet everyday a new cyber-attack
renders data and systems unusable
because of data corruptive
malware. The sum of estimated
ransomware payouts in 2021
was $1.2 Billion USD, with the
average payout being $258,000.
These losses are before factoring
in downtime, recovery costs and
reputational damage.
Regardless of the business continuity
playbook, every organization must
build more robust cyber resiliency
architectures, including airgap
technology and methodologies.
Often referred to as paying
a little insurance for the peace
of mind that business critical storage
has an ultimate line of defense.
A line of defense that is often orders
of magnitude less than the cost
of paying cyber criminals. Failures
to invest adequately, often result
in serious attacks, like the one at
Wyandotte County.
Value from an economics, social and governance position
According to ESG Research 51%
of CEOs rank sustainability as their
organizations greatest challenge,
while only 35% of organizations
have acted on their strategy.
Sustainability is no longer a
limited choice of the wilderness
exploration companies, like REI
Inc. Sustainability is a fundamental
driver of all choice individuals and
corporations make to reduce the
impact of living and working on
earth while preserving the ability
of future generations to have the
same capabilities and luxuries.
At the core of measuring the impact
or data storage products is Carbon
footprint, often detailed as Carbon
Dioxide equivalent (CO₂e). The
equivalent is the impact of minor
chemical compounds that are
sometimes less and sometimes more
toxic, yet much lower in occurrence
than CO₂. Why is this important?
Because every product results
from processes generating
CO₂e, produce CO₂e during
the lifecycle of usage, and have
a carbon impact during disposal
and even recycling. In this report we
are measuring the carbon footprint
from the three most impacting stages
of products; the embedded carbon
of the products and the energy
consumed to operate and cool
the product during usage, and the
impact of end-of-life processing.
The base for storage products is the
storage components of Solid-State
Drives (SSD), Hard Disk Drives
(HDD) and physical tape media,
LTO-9 in this compare. Based on
an eight-year life cycle, tape media
has a carbon footprint that is over
55 times lower than SSD, and over
25 times lower than HDD
Carbon Impact and Breakdown by Component
The need to integrate these components into larger operational systems further contributes to the complexity of
determining the real impact of data storage. Tape consumes 96% less energy than HDD when used for data archives.
Tape sustainability is demonstrated in a 1 Petabyte (PB) comparison of an industry leading high-density HDD storage
rack and the most widely sold 3U stackable tape automation, with a 10-year retention requirement.
A single Petabyte of HDD data
retained for a decade, results
in 66.2 tons of CO₂e, while the
tape solution results in 15.6 tons
of CO₂e for the same period.
The difference in this compare,
is equivalent to saving 13 years
of CO₂e production by the
average United Kingdom
gas powered automobile
.
All this CO₂e production carries
a calculated cost to the environment,
directly influencing the economics
of sustainable investments.
According to the 2022 DOI.org
study, which attempts to compute
the real cost of a ton of CO₂e
(tCO₂), the economic cost
of CO₂e is $185 tCO₂.
This cost must be applied to our
economic value of Ultrium9 media.
In our 1PB example, the LTO-9 data
retention solution results in a savings
of $9,361 USD. Organizations
deploying tape are starting with
lower carbon, produce less carbon
during the operational life of the
product and produce less waste.
Tape represents the core of
sustainable solutions for data.
The Economics of Tape Summary
The economics of data storage starts
with performance related data,
where reducing latency and total
energy consumption drives nearly
every decision. As data becomes
colder the latency demand increase
rapidly. Not only will more data
end up in the long-term retention
tier, the need for lower costs of
ownership plays a critical role in
meeting the shrinking IT budgets.
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
of long-term retention, frozen data,
is a comparison of three primary
solutions: HDD, tape and cloud.
Continuing the analysis of 1 PB of
data retained for 10 years
,
LTO-9
tape solutions provide significant
benefit for data storage.
Up to 1856% Return on Investment
The fundamental economic benefits
of deep archive data further extend
to new use cases, with a primary
benefit provided to multiple copy
data storage environments where
durability of data is crucial.
Reducing the cost of the third data
copy results in the savings observed
in figure 3, for every petabyte of
data moved to LTO-9 tape solutions.
A clear financial indicator can be established between the compared solutions by adopting the standard ROI calculation.
Recognizing the inevitability of
data recall and retrieval from deep
archives and applying the values
in to the LTO TCO tool, LTO-9
tape has a measurable Return
on Investment of up to 1856% when compared to cloud storage, and 501% compared
to HDD
.
This includes a tangible financial
impact of sustainability as
referenced in the LTO TCO
tool table in Figure 3.
Organizations that are mandated to report carbon
footprint of the IT infrastructure may recognize further unmeasurable and
variable benefits from the reduced carbon footprint of tape infrastructure
because of the lower total carbon footprint, the scale and scope of which are
calculated using vendor carbon impact reports such as the whitepaper provided on
lto.org
.
As energy restrictions continue to
be part of the daily challenges for
data centers, reducing energy of
stored data by utilizing LTO-9, offers
larger data centers even greater
measurable benefits through the
96% energy savings over HDD.
The impacts of the energy savings
are variable and specific to the
method of energy production and
the degree to which a specific
organization is impacted by
mandated energy restrictions.
Longevity of data, media reliability,
data durability, airgap by design
and the fundamental economic
benefits outlined, demonstrate the
primary influence for utilizing tape
in modern data storage. While
very small data customers can
realize an economic benefit from
utilizing cloud storage, or the benefit
of a single storage on-premises
for active and archive data on
HDD, every size organization can
recognize benefits from LTO-9 tape.
The intangible “insurance” that tape
provides against cyber-attacks,
especially malware can only be
measured when an organization
fails to protect their data.
LTO-9
reduces risk by providing the airgap
protection in the on-premises control
of the organization.
In a world that is challenged to
reduce consumption every day,
in every way, the most logical
long-term data retention technology
is LTO-9 tape.
Contact your BackupWorks Account Rep Today and
ask about LTO-9 Tape for your Backup and Archive Environment at 866 801 2944