Everything you need to know about LTO-9
The infamous LTO. Linear Tape-Open. It has been in the market for over six decades now and yet there HP, IBM, and Quantum companies still find areas to improve. Improvement added by the companies is according to the required advancement by the businesses. Year by Year Company creates a huge amount of data and requires data to create decisions and LTO can be considered as the biggest saviors during these times.
ULTRIUM: It is often used for backup and archives. LTO comes in LTO Ultrium format as LTO Consortium has released and developed a standard form factor for the LTO cartridges. LTO Ultrium format is used because of its powerful, scalable, and adaptive format. It is capable of optimizing high capacity, maximum storage density, and performance.
After the brief introduction of LTO, it is important to know the reasons why LTO is nearly considered as a standard in the business industry. Following are the reasons why LTO is widely populated and know more about the common benefits of using an LTO:
Capacity
Capacity – the biggest advantage of using LTO is as big as the amount of data it can store which is the huge amount of data.
The capacity of LTO is expressed in two ways:
NATIVE STORAGE – It is the actual capacity of the tape. The data is not compressed when data is stored in native storage. The data capacity mentioned in native storage is irrespective of the data being compressed or not being compressed.
COMPRESSED STORAGE – In this type of storage, the data gets compressed depending upon the compression ratio that is supported by tape but still the ratio depends on the data and the ratio that will be achievable by the computer. Compression depends on the redundancy of data, if the data is repetitive in nature then the data will be compressed in a high ratio. Modified Streaming Lossless Data Compression (SLDC) algorithm is used to increase the size of the compressor from a 2:1 ratio to a 2.5:1 ratio.
Archival Storage
The benefit of archival storage is that the data which is not currently being used gets stored there and then the data is retrieved from tape when required. The data is retrieved quickly due to its speed.
Backup
Essential data can be retrieved by following the procedures or steps of data recovery but there are chances that data can’t be retrieved like its form. Also, data is retrieved from the damaged tapes, it will take time and will also cost a heavy amount of money to repair. Therefore, using tapes will allow the user to store data as a backup in its original form as well as it will take less time to get hands-on the data lost. Also retrieving data from will be faster compared to retrieving data from a public cloud.
Inexpensive
Comparing tapes with disks, tapes cost less per gigabyte. Thus, the user will get more space for less money. Therefore, reducing the cost of the budget.
Secure
Data is not only required by companies or to run a business but even people outside business enterprises require data to perform fraudulent activities. These tapes will store data about the respective company’s trade secrets, upcoming events, or business ideas. Even the government stores data about how it is a country and its citizens. To protect these data, LTO comes with protection from cyber attackers. LTO protects from ransomware by creating an air gap. In air gap, the tape is removed manually and thus creates a gap and loses connection from the server or internet connection and will protect the data from various viruses.
LTO also has an option to write once and read many (WORM) which are used to store data that is kept for revision or store fixed information that can’t be allowed to chance therefore this option allows the user to store data in non-rewritable format.
The encryption feature was launched with LTO-4 generation. It is a very effective form of protection for data. In this feature, data is encrypted before being written to tape. Application Management Encryption (AEM) allows tapes to support encryption.
Reliability
If used properly then it can be reliable for nearly 30 years. This means if data is stored in an LTO it will remain secure and unaffected for nearly 30 years if it is taken care of.
Portable
Due to the stable build of the device, it is sturdy and completely removable and therefore it can be transferred from the place where data was created to another place. This, data in LTO will not be required to be transferred through servers which will save the user the risk of leaking data or catching any malware during the process of transferring data.
Storing LTO
Using an LTO tape costs less compared to anyway and upon that LTO cartridges will also reduce the cost to operate the LTO drives. When disks are not in use, they continue to spin and therefore consume energy and produces due to which HVAC equipment will be required. Now when LTO drives are not in use they remain still which is connected to the source of energy and therefore consume less energy and produce less heat, as a result, there will be less consumption of energy by HVAC equipment and thus storing LTO costs less as well.
Compatibility
LTO is compatible with its own generation and its immediate previous generation in terms of reading and writing function.
Multi-layer security support via hardware-based encryption
It is already known that LTO comes with great security. Likewise, with hardware-based encryption, during the time of data encryption computer hardware assists software.
Support for LTFS
Linear Tape File System makes the process of accessing files similar to disk drives. Through this feature, the file system accesses files stored on magnetic tape similar to disk therefore, tapes will access files at a similar speed to disks. To run on LTFS, tape media will require a specific format of data and software to provide an interface with the data.
Partition
LTO-5 generation was introduced with the partitioning feature. This tape benefits the user as the tape can be divided into two separately writable areas, known as partitions. Later, the LTO-6 generation came with four separate partitions.
BaFe – Barium Ferrite
Above LTO-6 generations, LTO comprises of BaFe. BaFe helps in reducing the size of the magnetic particle to which increases the recording density and thus results in high capacity data cartridges. This doesn’t cause magnetic signal loss. It is a patent technology by Fujifilm. Since BaFe is already oxidized, the BaFe particles will not get oxidized and as a result, the product will be serviceable for longer years compared with metal articles. BaFe allows better frequency characteristics which increase the margin of recording capability.
Areal Density
It is used to measure the number of information bits. Bits can be stored on a track length, surface area, or in a given volume of a computer storage medium. Higher the density, higher quantity of data can be stored in the same physical space. This is because more density will allow more storage capacity of a given medium. The performance of a particular medium depends on the density of the storage medium.
Features of LTO-9
The native capacity of LTO-9 is 18 TB and the compressed capacity is 45 TB.
The native transfer rate is 400 MB/sec and the compressed transfer rate is 1000 Mb/sec.
There is a possible chance or assumption that LTO-9 will be even compatible with LTO-10. Unlike the previous generation’s LTO will only support its previous generation’s LTO, the LTO-9 will be compatible will LTO-8, LTO-9, and LTO-10 as well.
Advantages of LTO-9
Increased Performance
LTO-9 has 18 TB of native storage and 45 TB of compressed storage. The transfer rate of LTO-9 is 1000 MB/sec for compressed transfer rate and 400/MBs for native transfer rate. Thus, LTO-9 has 50% more than LTO-8 and 1400% more capacity than LTO-5 which was launched a decade ago. LTO-9 is capable of reducing floor space to store long-term data to meet the demands of the user company.
Mitigate Ransomware, Data Loss, and Corruption
LTO provides high standards of security. Also, along with its increase in capacity, now more data can be safe in an efficient long-term archive with air gap feature and also being capable of saying offline when not in use.
Lowest-Cost Storage
Along with security from the modern type of fraud, LTO-9 will store a large amount of data at a very minimal cost. Also, LTO is capable of increasing scalability.
Flexibility
LTO-9 is capable of formatting new and unused LTO-8. LTO-9 is also compatible with LTO-9 and will be compatible with LTO-10.
Conclusion
LTO-9 generation has again taken a huge leap in storage capacity like in previous generations. LTO-9 holds double the amount of capacity of data storage than LTO-8 which not only benefits the user in terms of allotting less physical space but also reduces the production of e-waste. Along with the faster than ever transfer rate, the user will be saving time and environment both.
