Long-term Inactive Data Retention through Tape Storage Technology

Ivan VicanMetronet telecommunications d.d., Croatia

ivan.vican1@zg.t-com.hr

Ph.D. Hrvoje Stančić, assistant prof.Department of Information Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

hrvoje.stancic@zg.t-com.hr

2

Contents

1. Expanding the volume of digital data

2. Relevance of data over time

3. Tape systems

4. Tape standards: A. Linear Tape-Open technology

B. Enterprise Tape technology

5. Archiving capabilities

3

1. Expanding the volume of digital data

• Digital data long-term retention for legal, administrative, historical or cultural heritage purposes

• Hyper production of digital data + digitization of conventional data

• How to sustain growth and accumulation of retained digital data?

• Tape storage technology as an adequate solution?

4

2. Relevance of data over time

• Important variable that influences the choice of storage technology is frequency of reuse

• Data lifecycle is providing insight in data value fluctuation, which is measured by frequency in given time (business approach)

• Due to their nature and purpose, in institutions such as archives, museums and libraries data has a constant value

5

2. Relevance of data over time …

Source: Horison Information Strategies

6

3. Tape systems

• Devices that utilize tape medium• Three types of systems:

1.Tape drive - provides physical and logical structure for reading and writing processes.

2.Tape autoloader - tape drive and an automated tape cartridge exchange system with up to ten tape cartridges in the housing.

3.Tape library - two or more tape drives, depending on the quantity of tape cartridges which can rise up to a few thousand. Cartridges are exchanged with robotic mechanism.

7

4. Tape standards: LTO (Linear Tape- Open) technology

• Developed at the end of 1990s by LTO Consortium

• First open format tape standard which features high capacity and performance for archiving purposes.

• Most commonly used tape storage standard

• Features data encryption and Write Once Read Many (WROM) capabilities at the device level

8

4. Tape standards: LTO technology …

• Backward compatibility for two generations

• Clearly defined Six generation roadmap

9

4. Tape standards: Enterprise tape technology

• Primary developed for the needs of mainframe systems

• Proprietary tape technologies• Used for transactional process with

application such as LOB (Line-Of-Business), OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and other high duty cycle applications

• Enterprise tape technology is dominant in the Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL)

• Faster transfer rate and higher capacity

10

5. Archiving capabilites

• In the past, reliability was the weakest point of the tape storage technology

• Drawbacks are solved with new technical features and fully automated systems

• Archival life of tape is up to 30 years

• High rate of load/unload cycles

• Entry level LTO-4 libraries are scalable up to native capacity of 20 TB, 40 TB and 2-4 tape drives

11

5. Archiving capabilites …

• The tape libraries can be easily reconfigured and upgraded to the new tape technologies

• Open format standard with generation roadmap -> easier planning of digital archives

• Green technology

• Most affordable storage technology

12

Conclusion

• Archives, museums and libraries – should hold dual tape systems – virtualization of data at disk storage while it is

being retrieved from tape storage – for users– secondary system (electronic vault) off site – not

for users – disaster recovery – tape storage• How much? 1TB = apx. 100.000 books • Entry LTO-4 (2 drives, 20 tape cartridges) =

apx. € 15,000 for 16TB system• Consider tape technology for large storage

systems!!!

Ivan Vican,ivan.vican1@zg.t-com.hr

Ph.D. Hrvoje Stančić, assistant prof.hrvoje.stancic@zg.t-com.hr

THANK YOU!

Long-term Inactive Data Retention through Tape Storage Technology