© 2011 IBM Corporation

The Tape Renaissance

IBM Tape Technology

© 2011 IBM Corporation2

Have you heard?

Tape Backup is too slow

Tape Restore takes too long

Tapes are not reliable

Disk backup is cheaper

Tape is dead…

© 2011 IBM Corporation3

Backup and Recovery are top concerns for IT Managers

42%42% of midmarket companies

have experienced data loss. 32%32% lost files foreverforever.

Reasons for Data Losses?

Source: “For Small Businesses, Bad Backup Can Lead to Data Loss”, http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/data-loss-backup-physical-online-1077/

© 2011 IBM Corporation4

Hard Lessons Learned

August 2011

April 2011

April 2011: Amazon's huge EC2 cloud services crash permanently destroyed some data…. Amazon didn't say explicitly whether it was human error that touched off the event …..

August 2011: Lightning Strikes Out Amazon’s Cloud„…. Separately, and independent from the power issue in the affected availability zone, we’ve discovered an error in the EBS software that cleans up unused snapshots. During a recent run of this EBS software in the EU-West Region, one or more blocks in a number of EBS snapshots were incorrectly deleted. The root cause was a software error that caused the snapshot references to a subset of blocks to be missed during the reference counting process….. „

„….. Not only are 18 days of backups for some volumes gone, the majority of the remaining snapshots have been corrupted by Amazon’s backup system. ….“

© 2011 IBM Corporation5

Hard Lessons Learned

Feb 2011: Google restore gmail from

tape

…. I know what some of you are thinking: how could this happen if we have multiple copies of your data, in multiple data centers? Well, in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data. That’s what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we’ve been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue.

To protect your information from these unusual bugs, we also back it up to tape. Since the tapes are offline, they’re protected from such software bugs.

So what caused this problem? We released a storage software update that introduced the unexpected bug, which caused 0.02% of Gmail users to temporarily lose access to their email. When we discovered the problem, we immediately stopped the deployment of the new software and reverted to the old version.

Tape is, last line of defense!

© 2011 IBM Corporation6

2011 - IDC’s Top 10 Predictions Storage 2011

© 2011 IBM Corporation7

Tape Positives

Cost– Tape storage cost remains multiple

orders of magnitude below the same size disk system

Power– The biggest cost in the data center

is power/cooling for storage… Tape archive has near zero Watts of power consumption

Reliability – Tape’s inherent error rate is 1000

times better than disk and has 20 - 30 years of storage life

© 2011 IBM Corporation8

What happens to Tape?

Major development achievement in the last few years

– Cartridge capacity increases, while shrinking (or maintaining) access time

– Improved drive reliability and bit error rates

– Much longer media life

– Faster data rates and variable data rates• Up to 250 MB/sec native (up to 650 MB/sec with compression)• 30 – 250 MB/sec variable speed

New Tape File System makes usage of tape much easier

– Solution with a combination of disk and tape approached

© 2011 IBM Corporation9

Magnetic Tape (R)evolution

Product / Year: IBM 726 /1952 LTO5 / 2010 Demo 2010

Capacity: 2.3 MBytes 1.5 TBytes 35 TBytes

Areal Density: 1400 bit/in2 1.21 Gbit/in2 29.5 Gbit/in2

Linear Density: 100 bit/in 385 kbit/in 518 kbit/in

Track Density: 14 tracks/in 3.14 tracks/in 57 ktracks/in

Track density increase will be key for increasing the capacity

of future tape systems

18x

Bit aspect ratio: HDD (TDK demo, 2010): 3.9:1 Tape (LTO5, 2010): 123:1

© 2011 IBM Corporation10

Tape Technology & Development

2002: 1 TB Demonstration– GA expected 6 years later– GA 2008 with TS1130

2006: 8 TB Demonstration– GA expected 6-8 years later

2010: 35 TB Demonstration

…and 100 Gb/in² appears to be feasible

IBM scientist’s read-write tape device: new record in tape data density of 29.5Gbits / square inch

© 2011 IBM Corporation11

Why Tape – Advantages of Tape

Advantages– Fast streaming performance for large data– Off-line and portable– Easily scalable

• independently in capacity and performance• Performances scales linear in performance

– Long-term investment protection – Hugh development potential in large capacity

• 35 TB already demonstrated

Lowest TCO– Investment – Energy cost– 23:1 over SATA disk

It is estimated that 70% of the world’s data is on tape.

© 2011 IBM Corporation12

Long Term File System (LTFS)

File system implemented on dual-partition linear tape (LTO 5 + TS1140) Makes tape look and work like any removable media

– Files and directories show up on desktop, directory listing– Drag-and-drop files to/from tape

Supports data exchange Self-describing tape cartridge

– index enables recovery w/o external information– directory structure, file attributes, multiple file extends

Supports stand-alone drives and libraries (up to 60 PB File System) Opens significant new use cases

– (video archives, medical images, etc.)

FileAttributes

DirectoryStructure

File system info.

File bodies

File List Display

DiskLTO

Drag&Drop

Application

LTFS

© 2011 IBM Corporation13

Summary

Tape remains the most cost-efficient and greenest technology for data backup and archival storage– Total cost of ownership advantage of tape over disk >20x– Very long lifetime of 30+ years

Tape has a sustainable roadmap for at least another decade – 29.5 Gbit/in2 areal density demonstration shows feasibility of several future tape

generations– LTO roadmap has just been extended to 8 generations with up to 12.8 TB native capacity

Long Term File System enables self-contained tape cartridges– Makes tape look and work like any removable media– File system available now with standalone LTO5 tape drives– Opens significant new use cases such as video archive and individual scene access

Tape is alive and doing better than ever!

© 2011 IBM Corporation14

What is the right Storage for your Backup?

Only a combination of Disk, VTL, Tape and Software can optimize the backup infrastructure

– Storing information according to its value, maximizes performances while reducing costs

SLA

© 2011 IBM Corporation15

15

THANK YOU

© 2011 IBM Corporation16

Disclaimers

The performance data contained herein was obtained in a controlled environment based on the use of specific data. Actual results that may be obtained in other operating environments may vary significantly. These values do not constitute a guarantee of performance.

Product data is accurate as of initial publication and is subject to change without notice.

No part of this presentation may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from IBM Corporation.

References in this document to IBM products, programs, or services do not imply that IBM intends to make these available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference to an IBM program product in this document is not intended to state or imply that only IBM's program product may be used. Any functionally equivalent program may be used instead.

The information provided in this document has not been submitted to any formal IBM test and is distributed "As Is" basis without any warranty either express or implied. The use of this information or the implementation of any of these techniques is a customer responsibility and depends on the customer's ability to evaluate and integrate them into their operating environment. While each item may have been reviewed by IBM for accuracy in a specific situation, there is no guarantee that the same or similar results will be obtained elsewhere. Customers attempting to adapt these techniques to their own environments do so at their own risk.

© 2011 IBM Corporation17

Trademarks

The following terms are trademarks or registered trademarks of the IBM Corporation in either the United States, other countries or both.

IBM, S/390, ES/3090, ES/9000, AS/400, RS/6000, MVS/ESA, OS/390, VM/ESA, VSE, TPF, OS/2, OS/400, AIX, DFSMS/MVS, DFSMS/VM, ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager, DFSMSdfp, DFSMSdss, DFSMShsm, DFSMSrmm, FICON, ESCON, Magstar, Seascape

Other company, product, and service names mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.