Tape-based storage has always been the medium of choice for file backup and archiving. Low cost, portability and ease-of-use make tape a perennial favourite with storage administrators. Today, as vendors bring in new technologies, Akhtar Pasha & Prashant rao find capacity rising and reliability increasing

Jalin Anderson says that secondary storage is reaching a point where users in India now understand that having a ‘safe copy’ is critical to business success

Be it for offline backup or online archival in automated libraries, tape is an integral part of any hierarchical storage management plan. According to IDC India, 37,694 units of tape were shipped in 2001. In terms of value, the overall tape market, including standalone drives and automation, was worth $43.2 million during the year. The new HP (HP and Compaq) dominates the Indian tape market with a combined market share of 47 percent. HP shipped 14,462 units to garner $11.4 million, while Compaq accounted for 5,985 units worth $8.9 million. Tandberg Data was the runner-up with 8,180 units valued at $5.7 million giving it a 13 percent market share. The other vendors in this market segment are Dell, Seagate and StorageTek. Exabyte is a recent entrant with its VXA-2 range of products.

Naveen Mishra, an analyst at IDC, says, “The Indian tape market is broadly divided into two categories, tape drives and tape automation.” The new HP leads this market with a 55 percent share and $17.1 million revenues in the tape drive category (2001). Tandberg had an 18 percent market share and $5.4 million revenues. IBM, Dell and Seagate are other players in this segment.

Tape automation products worth $12 million were sold in 2001. Automation products include autoloaders and libraries. IBM dominated this segment with 127 units sold and $2.3 million of revenues in 2001. Compaq and Quantum (erstwhile Quantum ATL) are following IBM very closely in this space. Automation in the secondary storage is small as compared to the standalone drive market in India. Mishra of IDC says, “Automation products (autoloaders/libraries) are gradually gaining acceptance. If we analyse the share of automation in the overall tape market in H1 2001 and H2 2001, there is sequential growth of almost 50 percent.” IDC expects the share of tape automation will grow further in India.

Storage consolidation driving the market
Storage consolidation is impacting the secondary storage market. India and Singapore are the fastest growing markets in the APAC region. Banks, for instance, take daily backups, and are using tape drives heavily. Industry pundits say that it makes sense to use tape drives as the technology does not require heavy investments, unlike, say, SAN. On a network, 20 percent of the data needs to be online with the remainder staying offline. M S Sidhu, managing director of Apara Enterprise Solutions, says, “Tape as a backup solution is an integral part of overall IT infrastructure spending. We have seen tape being used in low-level disaster recovery (DR) and business continuance applications. Banks such as Citibank, HDFC and ICICI are using tape as a backup solution. NSE, Rediff, Yahoo, Cisco and Motorola are also using tape-based storage solutions. One of our main customers, GE Capital Services, is using Quantum’s M series libraries for secondary storage.”

The need to store, retrieve, back-up and restore data has increased significantly especially in the case of banks and telecom providers. Early adopters are telecom, banking, financial institutions, manufacturing firms, software firms and ITES players. Vendors are investing heavily on educating end-users, and even users have started thinking seriously about secondary storage. Tape is cheaper, and offers higher capacity. Tape storage meets the requirement of traditional backup and archiving to near-line storage, but it has wider uses. Tape storage can also be used for storing video, CAD/CAM and imaging files where the low cost/megabyte makes it an
economical alternative to on-line storage. On the other hand, disk storage has to be used where the backup windows are small and a faster restore is critical. Sunny John, country manager for Quantum in India says, “Estimates put tape-based backup and archiving costs in the range of one to ten dollars per gigabyte; this varies according to the capacity of the library. Disk-based storage systems are estimated to cost around $16 per gigabyte.”

Tape as a backup solution is an integral part of overall IT infrastructure spending, says m s sidhu

Technology trends
Today, various technologies like DAT, LTO, DLT, SDLT, and 8mm are available. Mishra says, “In India, the tape drive market is characterised by huge DAT installations; DAT is the de facto standard in the Indian market.” He adds that DAT is four generations old, and DDS-4, manufactured by HP and Sony, is the last format that was released. HP has already announced that it has stopped investment in DDS-4 R&D. “The Indian market will witness double-digit growth that will be driven by high capacity drives like DLT, LTO, SDLT and automation products,” adds Mishra. But this trend is at odds with what’s happening worldwide. DDS-4 has stopped in the US, and to a lesser extent in APAC. In India this market is slowly giving way to newer technologies like LTO, SDLT and VXA-2. It is estimated that in 2001, revenues from DAT drives accounted for $15 million, almost 50 percent of the total tape drive market that was valued at $31.2 million. Experts say there has been a drop in the DAT percentage in H1 2002 due to aggressive marketing on the part of LTO vendors. Says Mishra, “We are gradually seeing a shift in the Indian market and the slow acceptance of new technologies in drives such as LTO, DLT and SDLT. In a couple of years, higher acceptance of drives based upon these technologies is expected.”

Jalin Anderson, vice president and managing director, APAC region, Exabyte Corporation, concurs, “We are seeing acceptance of new technologies including Exabyte’s VXA-2 in India. VXA-2 is well positioned to replace DDS-4 as this is inadequate to meet the backup requirements of today’s servers and workstations.” The secondary storage market in India continues to show promise with a majority of devices installed as stand-alones. As data becomes mission critical, end users are looking at reliable options with a minimum of human intervention. That’s why tape automation-autoloaders and libraries are gaining acceptance. “In 2002 we began to see a shift to automation, especially in the larger corporate environments,” says Mishra. Demand for automated tape libraries continues to dominate tape drive vendor output. Over 50 percent of tape drives shipped globally support some form of automation, and this number is expected to grow. Capacity, performance and price of an entry-level 1TB autoloader is comparable to the stand-alone drive of 2000. Scaling up to more than two drives provides increased performance and throughput, cutting backup windows to manageable levels.

High-speed backup products
Enhanced Backup Solutions (EBS) is the next step in data protection. These disk-based products complement tape libraries by adding the quick access, high-speed data transfer and RAID protection that disk can offer. Quantum’s DX30 offers 216GB per hour backup speed. It separates backup functions from archive functions to optimise the data protection process.

IBM, HP and Seagate are all working on LTO technology. There are several others using this technology including Exabyte. IBM has a road map for the next (second) generation of LTO, which is already in beta. It should be available early next year. Second generation LTO drives have double capacity (200GB, up from the current 100GB) and push up transfer speeds from 15Mbps to 30Mbps. LTO Generation 1 is currently available.

The second generation of VXA-2 has just been released in the Indian market, providing 80 GB native at a 6 Mbps transfer rate. That’s four times DDS’ capacity for the same price. DLT is transitioning to SDLT providing 160 GB native. AIT is now moving their 4mm customers to 8mm, and their 8mm customers to linear S-AIT. LTO, VXA, AIT and SDLT all provide roadmaps with capacities of 1TB per cartridge. The race is on to reach this goal. Exabyte believes in LTO at the enterprise, and VXA in mid-range and entry-level server market.

This year, Quantum’s strategy will be to address the entertainment and security system segments, says Sunny John

Vendor strategies
IBM sells both LTO and Maxtor tape solutions. LTO currently maxes out at 100 GB native capacity on a single cartridge. With compression, the capacity doubles. Maxtor 3590, which was earlier at 40 GB, now offers 1 TB on a single cartridge, and the first deployment is expected on the Magstar format. IBM ships 40-50 tape libraries every quarter in India. Hero Honda has been using the IBM 3583 mid-range library for over a year now. Big Blue sees four factors driving this segment: disaster tolerance, storage consolidation, data sharing and data protection. The company offers a complete range of tape-based solutions. “The biggest issue is taking multiple backups. Backup windows can exceed 12 hours. It is possible to cut this time by as much as 50 percent,” says Sandeep Dutta, country manager, storage solutions, IBM India.

Exabyte recently entered the Indian market. It has appointed Wipro ePeripherals (WeP) as its master distributor for the VXA-2 range of products in the country. “With VXA-2, customers will get four times the capacity at double the speed for the same price as VXA-1. VXA-2 is priced at $1,000 and supports three interfaces—SCSI, ATAPI and Firewire—and a wide range of computing platforms and operating systems,” says Anderson. Exabyte has an automation product that will use VXA-2 technology and support seven cartridges in a single box. This product is priced at $3,500. “We are offering products that replace outdated DAT/DDS and DLT. VXA is our entry-level product addressing the SME segment,” says Anderson. Exabyte is introducing a new LTO automation product called Magnum20, a tape library that packs up to eight LTO libraries and 148 cartridges into a 20 U form factor delivering the highest automation density in the industry. The library-partitioning feature allows users to create eight mini-libraries within a single Magnum20. It helps in remote management and comes in SCSI and fibre channel variants, making it ideal for the SAN market. Priced at $20,000, Magnum20 is targeted at large enterprises.

Exabyte is also launching its 8mm Mammoth and LTO Ultrium automation products in Q4 2001. The Mammoth range of libraries includes the EZ17, 215M, 430M, XAD80 and X200. These products will be available in SCSI and fibre with single drive capacity of 60 GB. In the LTO Ultrium range of products, the company has the 110L, 221L and Magnum20 with capacities ranging from 1 TB to 30 TB. It plans to sell ten units of Magnum20 in the next one year.

LTO Ultrium is an enterprise class product best suited for data centres. Mammoth prices range from $6,000 to $49,000, while LTO prices start from $9,300. “With these products in place we will be in a position to address the banking segment,” says And-erson. For these enterprise products the company wants to appoint four Enterprise Solution Partners (ESPs) who will be system integrators focussing on vertical markets. These two products will also be available through WeP, the company’s Indian distributor. “Secondary storage in India is reaching a critical point, whereby users are understanding that having a ‘safe copy’ available is critical to business success. Moving forward we’ll see better-defined disaster recovery or business continuance plans, with offsite mirroring, duplication of data and long-term archival strategies becoming a focus for the Indian market,” adds Anderson. Exabyte’s product road map: “Today we offer VXA-1 and VXA-2 drives and automation along with our Mammoth drives and automation products. We have just launched our LTO range of products including a 1 drive autoloader, 2 drive library and a scalable 20 U form factor LTO product that holds up to eight drives and up to 148 cartridges, with SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces. Product features include partitioning, hot swap, redundancy and high density. Future products will include the VXA-3 offering 160 GB and 8Mbps native transfer rates, plus M3/SVXA, a combining of our VXA and Mammoth offering at least 250 GB and 24 Mbps transfers.”

Sunny John of Quantum says, “Our customers in India include GE Medical, Citibank, Intel, UTI and ABN Amro. In the manufacturing segment we have Telco and Maruti, in telecom we have Orange and Command Cell.” One of Quantum’s biggest accounts is ONGC, which uses SDLT products. “We are talking to HPCL and BPCL, and the deals will finalise soon,” adds John. Quantum offers Autoloaders (L2100, L500 that comes with DLT/SDLT drives), Super Loaders (3250/1280 with SDLT) and libraries (ATL M series-stackable ATL M1500 and ATL M2500 support DLT/SDLT/LTO drives). In the high-end library segment, the company has ATL P4000 and ATLP7000 supporting DLT/SDLT/LTO drives. John reveals, “This year our strategy will be to address the entertainment and security system segments. We will also expand our Indian operations by opening sales offices in Delhi and Mumbai in Q3 2002. These new offices will help us offer better support to the western and northern markets.” To strengthen its support services, Quantum has tied-up with QC Infotech. Currently, Quantum earns $500,000 from support services, and expects to increase it to two million by 2004. In India, Quantum partners with Apara and Wipro.

Apara is an IT infrastructure solution and service provider. For secondary storage the company has alliances with SpectraLogic, StorageTek and Quantum. Sidhu says, “We are offering customisable storage solutions to customers like ICICI, Citibank, NSE and Kotak Mahindra. Citibank uses DLT and SDLT products from Quantum.” Apara also sells products through 15 captive resellers, and 10 system integrators and product companies. For professional services it has alliances with the top three consulting firms for project specific assignments.

The Indian market will see rapid deployment of new technologies in tape drives like LTO, DLT/SDLT, AIT and VXA-2, and will witness double digit growth. Revenues from DAT will slip with the deployment of new technologies.

There is a bigger market waiting for tape vendors as consolidation of data happens in the manufacturing and oil sector. That’s one big opportunity for tape vendors to concentrate on, besides banking and telecom.

Indeed, as long as tape offers cost-effective, reliable and high capacity storage capability, it will be an important part of the future of storage solutions.

At the crossroads

Super DLT tape technology uses a new high-efficiency PRML (Partial Response Maximum Likelihood) channel, which was developed jointly by Quantum and Lucent Technologies. It applies proven PRML disk drive technology to high-performance tape drives, enabling higher recording densities. Due to the complexity of applying this technology to tape, Ultrium vendors like HP, IBM and Seagate opted to deploy the older RLL 1,7 (Run Length Limited) read channel technology. RLL 1,7 uses a read technique called peak detection. Peak detection focuses on peak voltage levels for interpreting data from the drive head. But as bits are packed more densely on the tape, it becomes harder to distinguish data from background noise or to detect separate peaks for individual bits. As bit density increases, so does the possibility of inter-symbol interference (ISI). ISI results from the overlap of analog signal peaks now streaming through the read/write head at higher and higher rates. PRML technology solves these problems by first converting the head’s analog signal to a digital signal, then uses the digital signal to detect data bits. The principal effect is that PRML can handle more tightly packed bits than can peak detection, while improving noise rejection. The benefits are higher bit densities, faster transfer rates and fewer errors per megabyte stored. The use of PRML means that Super DLT tape can achieve higher recording densities than LTO Ultrium. The SDLT 220 has seven percent higher bit density than LTO, while the soon-to-be released SDLT 320 will have 56 percent higher bit density. SDLT uses the Magnetic Resistance Head (MRH) that reduces the oxidation and contamination of coating. Hence SDLT products do not require cleaning. Though SDLT and LTO cost is same, SDLT can store up to 160 GB per tape cartridge, 60 percent more than the largest LTO tapes. The drives perform 33 percent faster than LTO drives. SDLT supports backward compatibility. Quantum has a clear road map for DLT and supports backward compatibility of two families. But none of the LTO vendors can support the backward compatibility issue. HP, IBM and Seagate are trying to bring LTO-2 generation products by Q1 2003. IDC analyst Naveen Mishra says, “There are some issues in LTO, but LTO will still emerge, and we expect more LTO-based deployment.” According to M S Sidhu,MD of Apara, “Compatibility is a big issue, and very important. In the past some products have failed to take off because of this issue.” The Ultrium consortium lead by IBM, HP and Seagate is optimistic about their LTO road map. The LTO family of tape drives is expected to deliver increased storage capacity and performance for several generations to come. It will provide a 200 GB capacity cartridge capability in 2002 with a significant improvement in data from 15 MB per second to 30 MB per second. These automated tape solutions will also be able to support multiple tape formats in the same physical library separated over distances of over 100 kilometres. One analyst says that “LTO is the way forward—multiple vendors, multiple offerings and compatibility between vendors.” LTO attacks DLT saying LTO is an open tape standard whereas DLT/SDLT is proprietary to Quantum. The fact that three fierce competitors (HP, IBM, Seagate) are getting together to collaborate on a technology might have seemed odd. But in the face of stiff competition from other proprietary tape formats such as DLT, the LTO initiative was established as a response to the market’s need for an open format. The success of LTO can be seen from the fact that the LTO consortium has entered its second year in the storage industry with an announcement that it has shipped the one millionth Ultrium tape cartridge. LTO drives can backup data at 9.8Mbps against 4.7Mbps on the DLT drives. The technology appears to be on track to meet its goal of capturing 50 percent of the compact tape market. The announcement is a significant milestone for LTO and illustrates the storage industry’s endorsement of the Ultrium product as well. In May 2002 IBM announced that 1 terabyte (TB) of uncompressed information was successfully written, and more importantly, read back successfully, in a single half-inch tape cartridge equivalent in size to the current LTO tape cartridge. Sandeep Dutta of IBM says, “The second generation tape device is under beta testing. In fact, some of our customers in Europe are already using it.” He adds that as enterprise customers move to consolidate their storage environments, the ability to store large volumes of data in a small footprint will grow in importance. IBM’s compression of 1 TB of data into a four-inch wide by five-inch long by one-inch thick cartridge exceeds a density of 1 gigabit per square inch on the recorded media. This was achieved using advanced particulate tape technology coupled with improved high density track placement. “With proven hard disk technologies and inventions unique to IBM tape development expertise, 1 terabyte is only a milestone and not a barrier. The future looks very good for improved capacity, significant increases in data rate, reliability and management of tape storage for the next 50 years,” says Dutta.