Originally posted by: WernerJaeckle

154 terabyte of data on one tape cartridge? We’re right on track! Let me explain why:

Just recently I read the announcement that IBM now offers LTO 7 cartridges to be used with the already available LTO 7 tape drives. This means that you can now leverage the full advantage of LTO 7, compared to the “backwards compatibility” only without the LTO 7 media. (As already “good practice” in LTO design, LTO 7 drives are able to read/write LTO 6 cartridges, and read LTO 5 cartridges, helping to preserve media investments and ease implementation.)

Let’s have a short look at the technology behind IBM’s LTO 7 drives and media:
LTO 7 delivers a compressed capacity of up to 15TB (at 2.5 : 1 compression rate) per tape cartridge, more than double the capacity of LTO 6, and data transfer rates of up to 750MB per second with compression (an 87% improvement over LTO 6). This means you can achieve over 2.7 terabytes of storage performance an hour per drive!

Not to forget (but already available since generation 5 of LTO technology) LTO 7 technology includes Long Term File System (LTFS) support. LTFS allows automated tiering of data directly to tape in a file system. With IBM Spectrum Archive, for example, this enables data file search and retrieval using directory tree structures and drag-and-drop techniques.

 

Now, let me describe why this is an important step towards the mentioned 154 TB cartridge:

First: In May this year, IBM and Fujifilm demonstrated the technology to store 154 TB of UNCOMPRESSED data on a single tape cartridge, roughly 25 times the capacity of the actual LTO 7 technology.

Second: The LTO consortium updated their roadmap earlier this year, providing an outlook towards LTO generation 10 with a planned (compressed) capacity of 120 TB per cartridge:

It does not require much math to see that LTO generation 12 should be able to deliver the mentioned 154 TB uncompressed capacity. And with the solid frequency of previous LTO generation releases, LTO 12 might be on the market in a decade from now already. (But, as I don’t own a magic crystal ball, don’t nail me on that date!)
 

On the other side: What about the user view on such huge cartridge capacities?

Just image how much information resides in 154 TB of data – regardless of whether it’s structured data (databases etc.) or unstructured data (movies, pictures etc.): It’s A LOT of user data.
Currently, archive and long-term backup are the primary use cases for tape storage.

But what about object storage, which is getting lots of attention at the moment? Don’t worry! IBM Research already works on “IceTier”, a distributed object storage on top of disk and tape. You can read an introduction here. Doesn’t this look like the perfect fit for a 154 TB tape drive?

You see: IBM Tape storage technology will continue to be the primary choice for (not only) cold storage!