The LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), HPE, IBM, and Quantum, recently released an updated LTO tape technology roadmap that extends the LTO Ultrium standard through 14 generations. The roadmap calls for tape capacities to double with each new generation, with LTO-14 delivering up to 1,440 TB (1.44 PB) per tape. Once introduced, LTO-14 will surpass the capacity of current LTO-9 cartridges by 32 times.

"LTO tape is more relevant than ever as low-cost, sustainable storage for long-term data archiving, and as a secure data storage option for strengthening cybersecurity," commented Sam Werner, VP, Storage Product Management at IBM. "With specifications now defined through generation 14, LTO tape is poised to support rapid and accelerating data growth. It offers organisations a sustainable, reliable, and low-cost solution to protect and store their critical business data."

The group's latest technology roadmap details specifications for up to fourteen generations of tape technology. The LTO Program first released its LTO Ultrium standard in 2000 with a capacity of 200 GB per cartridge compressed. Two decades later, the LTO Program released LTO generation 9, which supports tape cartridge storage compressed capacity of up to 45 TB and tape drive data transfer rates of up to 1,000 MB/second.

At less than $0.01 per gigabyte, LTO has established itself as the storage medium of choice for long-term data archiving both on-premises and in the cloud.

"According to IDC data, the magnetic tape market grew at robust 10.5% in 2021, driven by the needs to defend against ransomware, store large volumes of data at low-cost, as well as data centres pivoting to 'green' technologies," said Phil Goodwin, Research Vice President, IDC. "Moreover, data volumes continue to double every two to three years. Multi-petabyte implementations have become commonplace. This LTO roadmap, out to Generation 14 with more than 1 PB of compressed capacity per cartridge, illustrates how LTO technology will continue advancing to meet organisations' large capacity storage needs for years to come."

Higher capacity, lower cost While storage managers grapple with exponential data growth, fending off cyberattacks and reducing carbon footprints, the LTO Program has developed the right solution to address their needs. The most recently available generation, LTO generation 9, builds on more than two decades of data protection and storage innovation to offer increased tape cartridge storage capacity of up to 45 TB (compressed).

It provides full backward read and write compatibility with LTO-8 cartridges, and supports many previously introduced features, including enhanced security via hardware-based encryption, WORM (Write-Once, Read-Many) functionality and ease of data movement via the Linear Tape File System (LTFS).

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"LTO tape is more relevant than ever as low-cost, sustainable storage for long-term data archiving, and as a secure data storage option for strengthening cybersecurity. With specifications now defined through generation 14, LTO tape is poised to support rapid and accelerating data growth. It offers organisations a sustainable, reliable, and low-cost solution to protect and store their critical business data."

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The record-breaking LTO media capacity shipments of 2021 highlight how LTO tape has seen renewed adoption and interest among organisations due to its many attributes, including: the air-gapped protection it offers against ransomware, the benefits it brings to organisations' Environmental, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) initiatives, and its reliability and low cost as compared with other data storage options.

About the LTO roadmap The LTO Ultrium format is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and continuously enhanced by technology providers HPE, IBM and Quantum (and their predecessors) to help address the growing demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments.

This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.

With this newest extended roadmap, LTO tape continues to show how it is optimised to support rapid data growth year over year by offering industries a sustainable, reliable, cost-effective way to protect and secure their short- and long-term data storage archives.

More info: www.lto.org