Entries categorized under “Tape Systems”

Bad news is only bad until you hear it, then it's just information followed by opportunity. Information may arrive in political, personal, technological and economic forms. It creates opportunity which brings people, vision, ideas and investment together. When thinking about a future history of 2013, three (3) opportunities come to mind. (read more)

The factors that influenced which tape library to use in your environment used to be much simpler in nature when tape was used primarily as a backup target. But as disk has evolved to assume that role, tape libraries have evolved to provide new features so they may assume a much more strategic position within organizations to support their Big Data and Cloud initiatives. In this webcast, I take a look at how to choose the right tape library for your environment in light of these new forces that are impacting the use of tape libraries within organizations. (read more)

The tape pendulum is swinging back to the middle with more and more people coming to recognize that tape is more than alive; it has a bright future in front of it. However what people may fail to recognize is the many innovations going on right now in tape that are primed to be announced in just the next few years. In this fifth and final blog entry in my interview series with Spectra Logic's CEO Nathan Thompson, he pulls back the veil a bit and provides some insight into what we should expect tape libraries to deliver in the next few years. (read more)

Despite some claims to the contrary, the primary use case for tape remains in the context of backup. It is HOW tape is being used in the backup process that is changing. As it does, it is putting tape in a better position to solve certain data protection concerns that disk and even new flash media drives can never solve. In part IV of my interview series with Spectra Logic's CEO Nathan Thompson, he discusses why tape will remain an integral part of backup processes for a long time to come. (read more)

Despite the marketing buzz about the demise of tape, one almost indisputable fact remains: up to 80% of the world's data resides on tape. Statistics like that helped to convince Spectra Logic that there was a bright light at the end of the tape tunnel and prompted it to double down on tape products. In this second part of my interview with Spectra Logic's CEO, we discuss what Spectra Logic saw--that others did not--that led it to focus more heavily on tape as opposed to disk. (read more)

One of the most engaging and friendly CEOs one can hope to meet in the technology industry is none other than Spectra Logic's CEO Nathan Thompson who came from very humble beginnings and has worked hard to build Spectra Logic to what it is today - the leading manufacturer of tape libraries. However, how Spectra Logic came to assume this position is an interesting story in and of itself. Today, in the first part of this interview series with Nathan, he sheds some light on how Spectra Logic became so tape centric and even today views tape as an underserved market. (read more)

In the technology industry start-ups seem to come out of the wood work on an almost daily basis. But what is rare is when an established veteran in the technology industry such as Imation decides to cultivate and incubate a start-up within the company to meet pent-up customer demands for technologies that can handle their growing 'bigger data', cloud computing and regulatory requirements. In the first part of this interview series with Imation's Global Marketing Director Bill Schilling, we discuss Imation's evolution over the past 12 - 18 months and how it has positioned itself to be the "Bigger Data" storage provider for small and midsized businesses and enterprise (read more)

DCIG is very excited to announce the availability of its inaugural DCIG 2012 Big Data Tape Library Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 140 features on more than 60 tape libraries from 8 different storage providers. Driven by the explosion of storage requirements to address "Big Data" and the "Cloud," organizations are now more than ever looking for cost-effective, viable storage media on which to store this data. This is why DCIG believes tape libraries are poised to be one of the big benefactors of these growing storage demands which prompted DCIG to produce its first ever Tape Library Buyer's Guide to help enterprises choose the right solution for their environment. (read more)

This year's spring Storage Networking World (SNW) 2012 show was unlike any other that I had attended in the past. While I had good conversations with the folks from FalconStor, HP, QLogic, Spectra Logic and Nimbus Data Systems among others, what was most remarkable about this SNW was the lack of notable new announcements around storage. (read more)

Today is the last business day of 2011 and with it DCIG brings you our top most read and referenced blog entries. Each blog entry is compelling, yet timeless. What we find ironic about these blogs is that even as topics like "cloud," "deduplication," and "virtualization" generate a great deal of buzz, simple blog entries on storage, backup and data center labeling outperform them due to their foundations for IT leaders and practitioners. (read more)

Before DCIG announces its top three blog entries of 2011 tomorrow, this year we thought we would do something different and take a look at some other blog entries that garnered a great deal of attention throughout 2011 but not quite enough to reach the Top 10. That being the case, an honorable mention for these blog entries was in order. Further, what is notable about these entries is that, with the exception of one, they were all published in 2011. (read more)

Everyone asks, "Is tape dead?" Personally, I think that question is ridiculous. There will always be a demand for tape. The better question is, "How is the tape industry evolving to ensure tape remains relevant as a solution to address current technology trends such as "Big Data," "the Cloud" and virtualization?" This is the more pressing question regarding tape's future to which Spectra Logic provided some excellent answers this past week at its first ever analyst and press event. (read more)

Over the past 15 or so months DCIG has released a multitude of Buyer's Guides on topics ranging from Midrange Arrays to Virtual Server Backup Software to Small Enterprise Storage Arrays to Midrange Array Snapshot Software. As DCIG has done so, it has learned a great deal about what it has done right and areas where it can improve. But the general feedback is that the Buyer's Guides provide users valuable insight into different technologies and help them understand the market landscape. So today DCIG is announcing the topics for its Buyer's Guides that it plans to release for the remainder of 2011 and the first half of 2012. (read more)

To say that tape is currently viewed as a strategic initiative in most organizations could at best be described as optimistic and at worst a fabrication. But the continuing growth of rich media (social media in particular) and unstructured file data, much of which appears to be destined for the cloud, are creating an unprecedented demand for economical back end storage on which to store it. Tape is now better poised to become that storage media of choice but it still has a lot of growing up to do in order to gain broad market acceptance. (read more)

Yesterday the first ever Tape Summit kicked off at the Sunset Station Hotel and Casino in Henderson, NV, which is about 15 miles southeast of the Las Vegas strip. The opening night began with a keynote by Spectra Logic's VP of Marketing, Molly Rector, who cited a recent article by Storage Switzerland's George Crump where he said (paraphrasing) that what is saving tape is the same thing that saved Apple: innovation. I agree with his sentiments in part but I see innovation as only part of what is spurring tape's growth. (read more)

Of all the topics that I thought I might be writing about after my first day in attendance at the fall Storage Networking World (SNW) conference in 2010, I did not think tape would be it. In fact, it was not even on my radar screen walking into the show. But after meeting with the Ultrium LTO team yesterday at SNW, it is clear that tape is back in the storage conversation and those arguing for its broader adoption and continued use have much more to talk about than its power savings, larger capacities and faster speeds. (read more)

Evidence. It is that crucial item that can exonerate a company or subject it to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in penalties. So in today's world where organizations are occasionally tasked with sorting through mountains of data stored on tape to locate a critical piece of information to proof innocence or guilt, the difference between the right technology and the wrong is what may determine whether or not an eDiscovery job gets done. (read more)

Over the past few years there has been a lot of hype that tape storage is being left dead. But while disk is capturing the fancy of enterprise organizations because of disk's success in solving their primary backup and recovery problems, longer-term issues with data management are just now starting to surface. It is for this reason that enterprise data centers are finding new tape library solutions such as the Overland Storage NEO 8000e well suited for their emerging archiving needs. (read more)

It is funny how this industry changes almost from week to week. Sometimes there is so much activity going on you do not even know where to start. Other times (like during holiday shortened weeks such as this one), it is difficult to find anything really noteworthy to write about. In light of the fact that this week was a bit quiet from a news perspective, I wanted to reflect on some innovation occurring in the area of LTO-5 tape and how this might lead to a renewed interest in tape media in the years to come. (read more)

It is easy to think that the arguments regarding the cost of disk versus tape have abated. While that may be true in some circles, it still rages in the circle of small and midsized businesses (SMBs) that purchase and use direct attached media for backup. However a careful analysis of the total cost of ownership between RDX and LTO-3 will show that an RDX disk-based backup solution can be more affordable than a comparably configured LTO-3 tape solution. (read more)

There is no longer any doubt in my mind that tape will be around long after I am gone. Not only did Spectra Logic announce a new tape library (the T-Finity) that is targeted at the very largest of enterprise accounts this week, but a disk storage system representative made the tongue-in-cheek comment that partly serves as the title for this week's blog while we were talking about the possible sunset of specific disk and tape technologies. (read more)

Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) face some tough choices right now. Disk-based backup is definitely on the rise and has many appealing features, but it can come with a price tag that these organizations simply cannot afford and may not meet all levels of data protection needs. Many SMEs are using tape as a primary backup target or leveraging tape as an archive in a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) scenario. It is these requirements that the new NEO® 200s and NEO® 400s entry-level tape libraries announced this week from Overland Storage are designed to address. (read more)

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has changed over the years. The onslaught of low-cost, disk-to-disk based backup solutions coupled with the many problems associated with using tape as a primary target has rightfully enticed many data centers not to use tape in that capacity. But that does not mean there is no requirement to use tape within the data center. (read more)

In looking at the tape market and what it needs to provide in tape libraries to meet today's organizational needs, it is refreshes, not overhauls, that are required to align with these needs. Because tape libraries are becoming a secondary, as opposed to a primary, backup target in customer environments, tape library providers need to re-prioritize and even scale back the number of changes they make because if users do not want or use specific features, they will not pay for them. (read more)

The use of tape as a primary target for backup has supposedly changed in large part due to the onslaught of new disk-based backup solutions with many features that are enticing data centers to change course. One could even say that vendors and analysts have abandoned tape for greener pastures by seeking to associate themselves with disk's sexier features--all the while forgetting about tape's evolving role within the data center. (read more)