Tape Storage: Economical, Scalable and Secure

It’s a data-driven world—how will you keep up with growing demands?

Data is our most valuable currency in today’s digitalized world. It’s part of everything we do at work and home, when traveling or shopping, getting an education, being entertained, and even managing our health. In fact, data is so ingrained in everyday life that analysts predict the global datasphere will exceed 175 zettabytes by 2025.

Think about all the ways data comes into play today: connected, self-driving cars and the enormous amount of locational and operational data required to run them; high-resolution medical images, as many as 20,000 images in a single MRI scan of the human head; the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling smart cities that intelligently manage traffic flow, lighting intensity, and building systems; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, running countless algorithms to predict everything from when to trade a security to what song you want to listen to next.

Some data must be processed in real time. In other cases, the value of data is only realized by analyzing broad trends over time. Actively used, “hot” data, and infrequently accessed, “cold” data, both must be stored, backed up, and protected with appropriate balance of performance, capacity, and economy.The question is, how will you retain and protect all the data your organization requires to thrive in the digitalized world?

13 ZB installed capacity deployed

7 zettabytesdata stored on all devices | 3.1 zettabytes business data | 2.2 zettabytescold data

Disk storage remains a good choice for actively used data and higher-performance transactional requirements. Large-capacity drives can also serve growing data volumes well. But scaling up disk storage will eventually become quite expensive in terms of capital expense, management, and energy consumption.

Cloud storage is another popular choice. It’s economical, and highly scalable. However, storing and retrieving data from the cloud can also become expensive over time with a number of hidden costs.

In addition, the cloud may not be a viable option if you have to deal with data sovereignty restrictions and data privacy requirements such as those for the European Union GDPR. Moreover, cybersecurity has become another important consideration. Both disk storage and cloud storage are networked, and therefore, vulnerable to cyberattacks. Even with the strongest security measures, ransomware and other exploits can find a way through.

Tape storage is an economic, scalable, and secure way to ride the wave of data rising in your near future

When it comes to securely storing large volumes of data without breaking your budget, tape is still the best choice you’ll find.  Consider a few key points:

• Tape remains the lowest-cost storage medium for long-term (cold) data retention at just $0.003 per GB for the life of the cartridge compared to equivalent disk-based solutions that are approximately 6X more costly per TB.
• Tape is very efficient. The energy consumption of tape is <2% of hard disk drives for the equivalent amount of storage.
• Tape can also scale to meet growing data demands in both capacity and throughput for sequential read and write I/O, with new Linear Tape-Open (LTO) generation 8 tape cartridges providing up to 30 TB of compressed capacity (12 TB native).
• Tape is highly secure. Hardware-based encryption and Write Once Read Many (WORM) functionality meet the toughest industry compliance regulations. And it’s the only storage medium that provides an air gap between cyber criminals and your valuable data, securely stored offline and off-premises.

Tape Storage Advantages

$0.003 per GB  Lowest-cost storage for life | <2% Tape energy consumption vs. equivalent HDDs | 30 TB Compressed capacity of LTO-8 tape cartridges

Tape storage offers clear advantages for your long-term, high-capacity storage requirements in this data-driven age. The economic benefits help to reduce TCO significantly and lower energy consumption not only saves money, but it also provides a more sustainable solution to bolster green data center initiatives. Modern tape storage solutions also complement other storage technologies seamlessly thanks to the Linear Tape File System (LTFS), an open software specification that allows for simple ways to access data on tape. With LTFS, which is available on LTO generations 5, 6, 7, and 8, you can present LTO tape like any other drive, icon, or folder right alongside your primary storage. And because LTFS is open source software, not proprietary, content on tape is easily sharable among both local and remote users regardless of the platform on which they’re working. LTFS opens the door to virtually unlimited possibilities for how you can use tape across your organization.

BackupWorks leads the industry in tape storage for data protection and retention

• More Capacity: LTO-8 Ultrium tape cartridges store double the amount of capacity than that of LTO-7, in the same footprint.
• Outstanding performance: The latest tape drives deliver up to 300 MB/s transfer rates
• Easy to use: Tape library management software simplifies provisioning and administration of tape libraries, saving time and reducing hassle.
• Modular scalability: Enables you to cost-effectively expand your tape storage environment without ripping and replacing systems or managing multiple libraries.
• Investment protection: Tape libraries that allow you to re-use and upgrade tape drives without purchasing a new library.
• Reliability and availability: Industry-leading media archival life of 30 years, with built-in protection against connectivity failure.
• Supported by the industry’s best: Tape libraries are supported by all major backup software vendors

Get the capacity and economy you need to retain and protect growing data for the long term.  How will you deal with the expanding datasphere? How is your company setup to manage tougher data sovereignty and privacy requirements? And what if a cyberattack takes down your online storage—do you have another backup that hackers can’t access?

Contact your BackupWorks Account Rep today at 866 801 2944 and ask about Tape for your Storage environment.