Tape could replace hard drives - in some cases - thanks to this breakthrough

Moltuae

Moltuae

Rest In Peace
Reaction score
3,671
Location
Lancs, UK
Fujitsu has announced a new technology called Virtual Integrated File System that it says could help magnetic tape storage compete with hard disk drives as a low-cost, large capacity storage alternative.
Click to expand...

Article Link: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/t...ves-in-some-cases-thanks-to-this-breakthrough

With the feud between Sony and Fujitsu around LTO resolved late last year, all eyes are now on LTO-9, which is expected to be delivered in 2020. This iteration will deliver capacities up to 26.1TB (uncompressed) and raw throughput of up to 708MB/sec.
Click to expand...

Fujitsu's Virtual Integrated File System (VIFS) allows “multiple tape cartridges to be consolidated into one”, which means users can access data without worrying about individual tape cartridges.

It sounds a little like RAID but for tapes, which means that you'll likely need multiple tape drives or a tape library. This limits the product to enterprise and large businesses, where storage demands are usually measured in Petabytes and Exabytes.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah I'll pass on wanting to support that. Tapes were finicky! I never felt they were good for longevity. I recall maintaining them and dealing with their issues took up the larger percentage of time maintaining clients servers.
And for our larger clients that did have tape library/autoloaders...ugh.....hated dealing with those.
 
Barcelona said:
Backup to tape they said... what could possibly go wrong they said...
Click to expand...

LMAO! Yup I do recall a few times of the tape "being eaten".....
Most of the nightmare was..going to client that had pre-existing backup routines...and whoever set it up did the father/grandfather/great grandfather" routine...or other iterations of diffy backups.

...and one of those tapes in the mix...was bad.


.................... ugh! So I dreaded...DREADED...those calls from a client "server down"..where you knew you'd be reaching for backups to run a restore. Hop in the car and just sweat bullets all the way there wondering what hell awaited you.

I always did tape backups as full/complete backups every day.

So glad those days are way behind us...spoiled by the likes of Datto...where, if we get that call from a client..it's "OK, no problem, have you back in a few minutes". Never have to break out in a sweat anymore!
 
  • Like
Reactions: GTP
Tape replacement for a hard drive... I don't see it catching on.

duct-tape-computer-sata-cable-repair-on-motherboard-picture-id177329090
 
I can't recall if I saw this information here, but I know that somewhere someone else recently posted an article regarding the use of silica/glass as a long term, highly durable, storage media. A quick search, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=glass+block+long+term+data+storage, turns up a lot of information on this.

Even though I'm old enough to have experienced the, "Everything old is new again!," phenomenon across multiple arenas, I truly doubt that tape will ever make a comeback for all the reasons already mentioned by others. It's a very non-fault-tolerant medium.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
LMAO! Yup I do recall a few times of the tape "being eaten".....
Most of the nightmare was..going to client that had pre-existing backup routines...and whoever set it up did the father/grandfather/great grandfather" routine...or other iterations of diffy backups.

...and one of those tapes in the mix...was bad.


.................... ugh! So I dreaded...DREADED...those calls from a client "server down"..where you knew you'd be reaching for backups to run a restore. Hop in the car and just sweat bullets all the way there wondering what hell awaited you.

I always did tape backups as full/complete backups every day.

So glad those days are way behind us...spoiled by the likes of Datto...where, if we get that call from a client..it's "OK, no problem, have you back in a few minutes". Never have to break out in a sweat anymore!
Click to expand...
I shudder at the mere thought of "tape backup." Some things should stay dead.
 
Fujitsu's Virtual Integrated File System (VIFS) allows “multiple tape cartridges to be consolidated into one”, which means users can access data without worrying about individual tape cartridges.
Click to expand...

This technology has been around forever in the mainframe world. I helped IBM beta test and then implemented the worlds first Virtual Tape Server into a production mainframe environment back in the mid 90s. It was the grandfather of what is now the IBM TS7700 Virtual Tape Server. These are very popular and work quite well in mainframe data centers.

https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/ts7700
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top