Plenty of life left in tape

With LTO-5 now just starting to go mainstream, it’s reassuring to see that the Ultrium roadmap has been expanded with another 2 generations, taking the mapping out to 8 generations in total. Linking to the roadmap image, we see:

LTO Ultrium Roadmap(Image copyright the LTO Consortium.)

LTO6 had been roadmapped a while ago, and presents slightly more than double the native capacity of LTO5 at 3.2TB. Generation 7 and 8 are currently mapped for doubling each previous generation. Interestingly there’s predictions of higher increases in tape streaming speed. One would hope these are managed carefully; it was a real relief to see LTO5 not do the conventional doubling of streaming speed, giving backup networks and infrastructure generational time to catch up.

It’s pretty clear that an investment in LTO5 today is an investment in a well roadmapped future that has been consistently delivered on thus far. Sure, the use of tape within backup is evolving – we’re going to see it moved more into the role of long-term backup storage in larger sites, and clones-only in smaller sites, but with a healthy roadmap ahead of us and LTO5 just now starting to ramp up into mainstream, tape continues to show it’ll be around for a while to come.

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