Secondary storage catches up on growth

Higher capacity tape- and disc-based back-up is the prominent development forecast for the Indian secondary storage market in 2006. Abhinav Singh reports

One cannot write off the value of secondary storage (tapes and discs) as enterprises explore new ways to use both tape drives and discs for storing their data. According to IDC, the total tape storage market accounted for $52 million (in value terms) in 2005. Of this, pure tape drives accounted for $32 million, while tape automation products were worth $20 million.

IDC also points out that mid-range and low-end drives are seeing faster growth. Says Jim Simon, Director, Marketing, Asia Pacific, Quantum, “In India the primary storage market is growing at a CAGR of 50 percent (by revenues), which is impacting the secondary storage market. The near-line data has now been put on to secondary storage devices (tapes and discs). In India we are witnessing faster adoption of tape technology...it is the fastest-growing market for Quantum in the entire Asia Pacific region.”

As far as the disc storage market is concerned, it is expected that PC growth, which drove hard disc drives in 2005, will continue to do so in the current year. 2005 saw an increase in the capacities of hard disc drives with vendors such as Seagate launching its hi-capacity Barracuda 7200.9 which can store up to 160 GB on a single disc. The 7,200 rpm drives are available in SATA (Serial Attached Technology Attachment) and Ultra ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) interfaces and capacities starting at 80 GB. An overview of the secondary storage market reveals that both tape and disc storage will continue to witness growth.

Let us now take a closer look at how the secondary storage market will shape this year with high expectations from both tape and disc vendors.

According to IDC, the total tape market is projected to grow at 15 percent to $60 million this year. The tape drive market is expected to grow to $37 million and the tape automation market to $23 million.

"Tape will continue to play a critical role in companies’ data protection strategies. It remains the most cost-effective and reliable way for companies to get a disconnected offline copy of their data. Even companies integrating disc into their data protection plans will continue to use tape" -Jim Simon Director Marketing, Asia Pacific Quantum

"There is migration from PCs to notebooks because of reduction in prices. In 2005, a large portion of the growth resulted via increased adoption in B&C class cities due to the decline in prices. All this is going to give a boost to the hard disc drive market in India in 2006" -Rajesh Khurana Country Manager Seagate India

PC sales pushing disc drives

PCs are still the largest consumers of hard disc drives today. The Indian PC market has always been a dynamic one, with various factors driving growth over the years. Rajesh Khurana, Country Manager, Seagate India remarks, “There is migration from the PC to notebook because of the reduction in prices. In 2005, a large portion of the growth resulted via increased adoption in B&C class cities due to the decline in prices. All this is going to give a boost to the hard disc drive market in India in 2006.”

"Rotating magnetic storage is becoming a dominant form of storage in India because of improvement in their capacity and performance. They are also scoring over tapes in offering random access, performance, accessibility and flash memory" -Sharad Srivastava Director, Sales India & South Asia Western Digital

Several PC players in India have also launched sub-Rs 10,000 PCs, facilitating an almost instantaneous expansion of the market. Government support coupled with aggressive marketing strategies has been a winning formula. PC growth has therefore been a major influence in the expansion of the hard disc drive market in India.

Besides this, the concept of the digital lifestyle has taken root in India. The likes of Intel, Microsoft and Cisco have been backing the trend with their range of entertainment and communications offerings for the home user. The new age smart home is now equipped with home theatre systems, wireless networks, gaming consoles and security systems. As these aspirational technologies become mainstream they will push the need for additional storage to keep up with the data they generate. Consumers in India are now looking to store photographs, films and music in digital formats.

The gaming market has seen tremendous growth of late, giving storage manufacturers a new market to target. As gaming inches its way to become the Indian geek’s pass-time of choice, hard disc drives are expected to get a boost. Hard disc vendors such as Seagate and Western Digital are not only aiming at higher capacities and rpms but also slick casings and special lighted drives.

Sharad Srivastava, Director, Sales, India & South Asia, Western Digital states, “Rotating magnetic storage is becoming a dominant form of storage in India because of the improvement in its capacity as compared to cost, high performance, and a variety of form factors. They are also scoring over tapes in offering random access, performance, accessibility and flash memory.”

Tapes still kicking in

Tape still remains unrivalled in terms of cost and capacity for data storage, and with its removable and portable attributes it will continue to play a crucial role in corporate data protection strategies in India. Chris Wening, Director, Asia-Pacific Sales, Exabyte Corporation agrees. “No other technology offers a high capacity advantage that costs much less. While other technologies may offer strengths in one or more areas, overall they do not meet the entire set of customer needs that tape addresses. Tape continues to be the preferred medium for archival, and India continues to be a big market for us.”

Simon holds similar views. “Tape will continue to play a critical role in companies’ data protection strategies. It remains the most cost-effective and reliable way for companies to get a disconnected offline copy of their data. Even companies integrating disc into their data protection plans will continue to use tape. Additionally, there have been significant improvements in tape technology over the last several years—in capacity, performance, manageability and functionality. But over time, tape will become more of an archive medium as backup requirements will be met by disc-based solutions.”

New technologies in tape

Today, tape-based solutions are becoming more intelligent, and tape drives are shipping with more advanced features such as lower bit-error rates, higher bit densities, greater capacities and native fibre channel interfaces. These tape drives are also more reliable and efficient, as well as easier to use in different storage environments.

As far as the technology is concerned, the capacities, throughputs and scalability have gone up with affordable prices. In tape drives there are a variety of options to choose from, starting from single cartridge tape drives and auto-loaders to multiple cartridges and tape libraries that can take large volume backups.

The IT industry has been the driver of this growth. Other industry verticals like BFSI, telecom, BPO, and R&D establishments are also key segments which have been deploying such backup solutions. This is mainly because tape-based backup is cost-effective, scalable and has long-term reliability.

Tapes with enhanced security features

With security of the data becoming an important area of concern for enterprises, there are technologies such as WORM (Write Once Read Many) which are now available on tape. WORM tape ensures that the information can never be modified by anyone. This feature ensures that nobody can read data stored on the tapes if a theft takes place. It also ensures high-level security for customer information in an organisation.

Explains Simon, “We have introduced DLT-V4 and the DLT-V4 drive that combines DLTSageT for predictive and preventive diagnostic manageability. We have also developed the DLTIceT for meeting regulatory compliance requirements through standard media and WORM capability. In WORM technology, data is protected in compliance with Basel-II.” Quantum has introduced DLTSageT Tape Security for its tapes; this uses electronic keys to prevent unauthorised access to data on tape cartridges. It protects data in the event of the tape media being lost or stolen; it also provides protection for classes of data that do not require full encryption.

Tiered storage to become popular

The concept of a hybrid solution is expected to take shape in India this year. Many enterprises are combining disc and tape solutions. Simon says, “Tiered storage is like a set of building blocks in the implementation of an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy. A tiered storage strategy can manage much of the data retention policies for different applications manually or in a semi-automated manner, and therefore it is more labour intensive.”

Tape automation and robotic libraries to gear up

Tape automation is expected to become more popular among Indian enterprises in 2006. Avijit Basu, Country Marketing Manager, Enterprise Servers & Storage, HP India Sales says, “Tape automation, which is basically the high-end library that should have native fibre connect and manage mixed media. The tape library should be as intelligent as the disc array. In the disc array there is a controller in place which is intelligent enough to understand the kind of availability and robustness in backup as well.”

At the same time, robotic libraries are also expected to gain more popularity. Says Praveen Sahai, Product Marketing Manager, Asia South, Data Management Group, Sun Microsystems India, “End-to-end robotic libraries having robotic arms are becoming popular among Indian enterprises as they are helping in making archival and retrieval of information in tape libraries streamlined like never before.” HDFC Bank is using Sun StorEdge L700 robotic library while Pragati Printers is using the Sun StorEdge L40 robotic library.

Disc-to-disc backup to see rapid growth

Sanjit Sinha, Senior Manager, Hardware, Software and Services Research, IDC India says, “Disc-to-disc backup is expected to grow rapidly in 2006 and is quickly taking on the mantle of enterprise backup, relegating tape to archival duty and for long-term backup.”

With disc prices falling and SATA-based storage solutions coming to the fore, customers have an easier justification for moving to disc-based backup solutions. Disc-based backups are finding new applications. They are suitable for disaster recovery, imaging, document management, e-mail, archiving, broadcasting, security surveillance and information warehousing.

Indian companies, both large enterprises as well as SMBs, have realised that the way to reduce the backup window and retrieve storage lies in using disc-to-disc backup technology. Although tape continues to be a prime medium for long-term archival, backups are increasingly being taken onto disc due to the need for an ever-shrinking backup window as critical data applications need to be restored quickly and efficiently. In disc-to-disc backup, the data is written to a disc-based backup box from where it is written to the tape. This intermediate step returns control to the server or storage array so that it can do productive things such as serving up files to employees who need them urgently. Some hard disc vendors feel that customers are frustrated at the limitations of tape and desire an approach that increases performance, offers much-needed simplicity, and maximises the value they extract from their existing investments in data backup infrastructure.

Additionally, disc drives are available in speeds of 10,000 rpm and 15,000 rpm, allowing enterprises to conduct ultra-fast backups. It takes two hours to backup 1 terabyte of data onto a tape, whereas the same amount of data can be backed up in less than half an hour using a disc-to-disc backup. The technology in tape backup is similar to cassette tape recording whereby information is written sequentially onto the magnetic surface of the tape i.e. information is written on the portion of the tape that is directly under the magnetic head while the tape is being rolled.

Data access (reading and writing) on tapes requires sequential access. If the data is located at the end of the tape, then accessing it will require positioning the tape to the end i.e. rewinding the tape. Even retrieving information via tape is slow as the magnetic tape has to be rewound so that the desired information is placed directly under the read-head. A tape is prone to distortion, making it difficult to retrieve data.

SATA to make discs popular

With the arrival of cheaper disc technologies such as SATA, disc drives are set to give tapes tough competition as far as data backup is concerned. SATA is a popular interface used on drives for disc backups. SATA drives are designed to offer higher data transfer rates, simpler RAID integration, and faster HDD installation than their Parallel Attached Technology Attachment (PATA) predecessors. Some SATA drives are also hot-plug compatible and allow for smaller system designs.

The adoption and growth of SATA will definitely lead to more organisations adopting disc storage as it will continue to provide a cost-effective solution for bulk storage. Nearly 70 percent of installations in India are still on PATA and their graduation to SATA drives will take time, but the adoption of disc-based backup is expected to be rapid.

Disc drives to have higher capacities in small factor

Hard disc drives (HDD) can be as small as an inch. Despite that, capacity continues to increase. A one-inch drive can store up to 8 GB, while 2.5 and 3.5-inch drives can store between 100 and 500 GB. Analysts say that hard disc drives with smaller form factors are gaining momentum.

Worldwide shipments of these micro-drives touched three million units in 2005. As the industry evolves, the market will continue to see higher capacities in smaller form factors and an array of advanced technologies to accommodate storage growth. Consumer electronics, client computing and enterprise application players are all clamouring for these drives. There are many factors (such as the head and the media) that go into the hard disc drive. However, when the size of the disc goes down there is an increase in cost per GB. Presently, there are limitations on storing more than 6 GB of data as a one-inch HDD has only one platter to store data unlike the 2.5-inch drive that has two.

But there are still some performance issues with regard to smaller form factors, especially in the one-inch HDD, because it spins slowly. It can spin at a maximum speed of 3,600 rpm whereas the 3.5-inch drive spins twice as fast. To spin a drive faster you need a powerful motor. The 3,600-rpm is good enough for video but not for DVD applications.

Interestingly, when the 2.5-inch drives were released around 2-3 years ago, their speed was 3,600 rpm, whereas the latest batch of 2.5-inch drives can spin at 5,400 rpm. Vendors expect that the price per GB on a one-inch drive will come down in the next 6-9 months, and that the rpm rate will rise. The vast majority of micro hard disc drives are being used in personal cameras and music players.

Embedded system designers are working on commercial and industrial designs that take advantage of high-speed, high-capacity small form factor hard drives. Some OEMs have even started embedding these discs on motherboards and blade servers, especially for use as boot drives.

Other potential applications include printers, wireless medical PDAs, test and measurement equipment and automotive devices. The vast majority of small drives are expected to go into digital cameras and consumer electronic products. Sales of the sub-2.5-inch drives will be contributed largely by the surging demand for MP3 players and by high-end mobile phones. Portable digital entertainment has never been this popular, and hard drive-enabled MP3 players are already becoming ubiquitous abroad. Research agencies estimate that by 2008, at least 8 percent of mobile phones will contain a micro drive.

While secondary storage is showing tremendous growth momentum in the Indian market, it is expected that new technological innovations like advanced capacities at lower price points will continue to hit the market. With compliance-based regulations and enterprises going in for ILM strategies, the importance of archival is bound to increase. Organisation will some time or the other will think of moving their primary data on to secondary data.

abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com