The Tale of the Tbyte Tape Drive

By James Rogers, July 14, 2008, NOON

What is it about the tape industry? You hardly hear a thing from the major vendors for months, even years, and then, suddenly, they are clambering over each other to claim market "firsts."

IBM, for example, attempted to steal a march on its archrival Sun today with the launch of what it describes as the worlds fastest Tbyte tape drive.

This came less than 24 hours after Sun unveiled its own tape first, unveiling the world’s first Tbyte tape drive, although IBM certainly seems to be pushing the speed envelope.

IBM's TS1130, which was launched today, can transfer data at up to 160 Mbyte/s, compared to the 120 Mbyte/s offered by Sun’s T10000B.”The faster that throughput is, the faster you can write to your tapes, the faster your backup is,” says Eileen Maroney, IBM’s worldwide product marketing manager for enterprise tape. “It’s also less energy because you’re burning the drive for a shorter period of time.”

Despite IBM’s speed hike, users will have to dig deep for the TS1130, which will be priced from $39,050, when it is launched later this year, although the vendor is offering a $19,500 upgrade package for users of its existing TS1120 tape drive. Pricing for Sun’s T10000B starts at $37,000.

IBM, which bought Israeli VTL and de-dupe specialist Diligent for a rumored $200 million earlier this year, is clearly refocusing its attention on its tape business at a time when users are under serious archiving pressure.

“There have been so many government regulations on the amount of time that you have to keep data for discovery and legal purposes,” says Maroney. ”That’s really driving tons and tons of tape volume.”

Still, tape is facing some stiff challenges. Emerging backup technologies such as RDX, for example, are being touted as an alternative archiving technology, not to mention the emergence of solid state disk, which is quickly changing the dynamics of the disk market.Tape may be alive and kicking, but the recent flurry of activity in this space proves that IBM and Sun know that they have a battle on their hands to keep the technology current.

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