BOULDER, Colo. Sept. 8, 2021 – Spectra Logic, a leader in data management and data storage solutions, today announced the availability of the ninth generation of LTO technology for its family of tape library solutions, including the Spectra TFinity ExaScale, T950, T950v, T680, T380 T200, T120, T50e and Spectra Stack. These tape libraries support LTFS, WORM, hardware encryption, and Spectra’s exclusive Media Lifecycle Management. Certified with all major ISV packages, Spectra’s tape libraries seamlessly integrate with Spectra’s BlackPearl® Object Storage Platform, enabling users to create a multi-storage ecosystem for maximum storage, access and preservation of data to disk, tape and cloud.
“The industry is seeing a resurgence of tape storage deployments by organizations with growing data repositories, even if they already have disk and cloud, because tape provides the greatest storage capacity at the lowest cost per terabyte with exceptional reliability,” said Christophe Bertrand, senior industry analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Tape technology, such as LTO-9, also offers unmatched air gap protection against ransomware, enabling organizations to protect their data offline and beyond the reach of malevolent threat actors.”
The new ninth generation of LTO (Linear Tape-Open) tape technology is designed for even greater data storage density and speed, providing up to 18TB of native capacity per cartridge (up to 45TB with compression) surpassing the capacity of LTO-8 by 50 percent. Full-height LTO-9 drives deliver uncompressed transfer speeds of up to 400 MB/second, almost two times faster than current hard disk drives. In addition, LTO-9 drives are backward compatible with LTO-8 tape media, allowing users to read/write LTO-8 media.
“Today’s news of LTO-9 tape availability confirms the extensibility of this popular open format that was developed more than 20 years ago,” said Nathan Thompson, CEO and Founder of Spectra Logic. “With each generation, new features have been introduced, such as WORM, LTFS and hardware encryption. We recently made software updates for our installed base of thousands of LTO libraries to enable customers to add or upgrade to LTO-9. And since we are the first to offer a tape library – the TFinity — that can store an astounding exabyte of native data with LTO-9 drives and media, we couldn’t be more excited about the long-term prospects of LTO tape technology for our customers.”
The World’s Largest Data Storage System with LTO-9
Designed to meet demanding backup, archive and data protection requirements, the Spectra TFinity Tape Library addresses exponential data growth in such industries as high performance computing, scientific research, media and entertainment, cloud storage, education, healthcare, finance and traditional IT. The Spectra TFinity provides organizations with the ultimate in capacity, performance, reliability and scalability at a much lower price point than other storage options.
Highlights of Spectra’s TFinity Tape Library Include:
- Tri-Media – The only tape library to support three tape technologies in the same library (LTO, IBM’s TS 11xx and Oracle’s T10000)
- Scalable from 3 to 45 frames, over 56,000 slots, with bulk load capability
- Advanced dual robotics for higher performance and greater reliability
- Maximum compatibility to work with any third-party software package
- Custom front library panels that showcase customer brand
Spectra LTO-9 Certified Tape Media
With today’s news, Spectra extends its Certified Media process to support and improve the characteristics of LTO-9 media. Spectra Certified Media undergoes a rigorous inspection and verification process to ensure that it is the highest possible grade of tape media on the market and comes with a lifetime guarantee. Additionally, Media Lifecycle Management ensures the safety of data by providing continuous assessments on more than 40 different metrics throughout the life of each tape. Detailed reporting mitigates any media problems and restore issues, allowing users to copy and move data onto new tapes should it be necessary.
