FUJIFILM INSIGHTS BLOG

As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads begin to permeate and drive business processes and decision-making at all levels, effective data management is becoming imperative. Data needs to be stored for a long time and it needs to be available to be actively accessed during its lifespan.

Active archive solutions are ideal for managing information for AI and ML frameworks as they can provide customized optimization for storage, security, and performance. In addition, AI tools can be applied in an active archive to automate and streamline data management processes in various ways. For example, AI can cleanse, normalize, and categorize long-term data for AI workloads, automate metadata tagging and indexing for inactive data, and identify and archive sensitive information.

A new eBook from ESG Research, sponsored by the Active Archive Alliance, explores the general state of data archiving and the benefits and challenges shaping modern environments and strategies. It also examines how active archiving integrates into modern data archiving practices and the role it plays in determining the success of AI/ML initiatives.

Key findings include:

• On average, organizations have 6.7 PB of data on corporate servers, with 44% of the data on an active archive.
• Active archive data growth is in lock step with overall data growth; archive data doubling roughly every 3.5 years.
• AI/ML capabilities are a key accelerator for the adoption of active archives.
• The top three use cases for active archives are analytics, business efficiency, and cyber-resilience.

Ultimately, AI depends on well-organized data for success, which underscores why effective data management through an active archive is crucial for an AI future. Organizations without intelligent data management processes that feed into business intelligence workloads risk being left behind by competitors who do.

For more information, access the eBook here: Impact of AI/ML on Active Archiving.

Fred Moore of Horison Information Strategies, a long-time storage industry expert and consultant, recently published a 2024 update of his report entitled “Tape. New Game. New Rules”.

This updated report provides a focus on how modern magnetic data tape is solving for IT challenges including runaway data growth, economic pressure, sustainability issues, cybercrime and the reliability that’s needed for the long term preservation of data. And that data that has also grown dramatically in value as we learn to analyze it and derive competitive advantage from it.

Below are 9 reasons why today’s modern tape systems represent a new game with new rules. Taken together, they make a compelling case for many to revisit the rich value proposition that tape has to offer now and well into the future.

LTO Ecosystem Extends Roadmap

In 2022, the LTO Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), HPE, IBM and Quantum Corporation, announced an updated LTO technology roadmap that extends the LTO Ultrium standard through 14 generations. The roadmap calls for tape capacities to double with each new generation, with LTO-14 delivering up to 1,440 TB (1.44 PB compressed) per tape. The new LTO roadmap extension is more relevant than ever and at this point no other storage technologies have revealed a comparable multi-generational roadmap.

LTO-9 Adds Capacity and Features

LTO-9 is the latest LTO generation bringing new functionality to tape including higher capacity, data rate, access time and reliability improvements.  LTO-9 increased the native cartridge capacity of LTO-8 by 50% to 18 TB (45 TB compressed) and increased drive throughput (11%) up to 400 MB/sec enabling a single LTO-9 drive to write up to 1.44 TB/hour. A new feature for the LTO family with LTO-9, oRAO (Open Recommended Access Order) reduces initial file access times to first byte of data by as much as 73%.

Record Capacity Achieved with TS1170 Tape Storage System

2023 marked the debut of a new ultra-high-density tape drive with a native storage capacity of 50 TB in a single cartridge and capacities up to 150 TB per cartridge with 3:1 compression. The IBM TS1170 storage system represents the world’s highest cartridge capacity ever announced and enables data intensive secondary storage applications including AI, big data, archiving, cloud computing, and analytics to significantly reduce their total cost of ownership.

Further Improvements Made in Tape Media Longevity

In 2019, Fujifilm and JEITA (Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association) officially confirmed the longevity of Barium Ferrite magnetic signal strength to be stable for at least 50 years based on studies of LTO-7 tapes. Prior to this confirmation, the number of years for LTO tape longevity had been rated up to 30 years.

Tape Leads Reliability Ratings

Since LTO-1 first came to market in 2000 with a native capacity of 100 GB, the capacity of LTO cartridges has increased by 180 times and data rates have increased by 20 times. Over the same period, the specified uncorrectable Bit Error Rate (BER) of LTO cartridges has improved by a factor of 1000, three orders of magnitude improvement. LTO-9 provides an industry leading uncorrectable bit error rate of 1×10²⁰ compared to the highest HDD BER at 1×10¹⁷. A BER of 1×10²⁰ corresponds to one unrecoverable read error event for every 12.5 exabytes of data read. Today, both the latest LTO and enterprise tape products are more reliable than any HDD (or SSD).

Tape Reduces CO2, eWaste and TCO

Moore cites key stats from Improving Information Technology Sustainability with Modern Tape Storage, a research paper issued by Brad John’s Consulting that compared an all data on HDD solution to an all-tape solution and to an active archive that moved 60% of the HDD resident (low activity) data to tape. Moving 60% of HDD data to tape for 10 years reduced carbon emissions by 58% and electronic waste was reduced by 53%. Moving 60% of HDD data to tape, results in a 46% TCO savings. Moving all data to tape results in a 78% cost reduction.

Tape Air-Gap Thwarts Cybercrime

The tape air gap, inherent with tape technology, has ignited significant interest in storing data on air-gapped tape. The “tape air gap” means that there is no electronic connection to the data stored on a removeable tape cartridge therefore preventing a malware attack on stored data. HDD and SSD systems remaining online 7x24x365 are always vulnerable to a cybercrime attack.

Data Protection Strategies Evolving with Tape

Using tape to backup HDDs was the original data protection strategy, but having one backup copy is no longer sufficient. The widely accepted and genetically diverse 3-2-1-1 Backup Strategy states that enterprises should have three copies of backup data on two different media types, one copy offsite and one air gap copy. Combining the tape air gap copy with available tape drive encryption and available WORM (Write Once Read Many) tape strengthens any data center cyber resiliency strategy.

Active Archive Leverages Tape

As the amount of secondary storage data soars, new technology tiers are emerging in secondary storage including the Active Archive, Traditional Archive and Deep Archive to address many new use cases. Many data management products now support tape as an object storage target using S3 services. Combining the open tape file system LTFS with tape partitioning, data mover software (HSM, etc.), an HDD array or NAS in front of a tape library creates an active archive.

In Conclusion

At least 80% of the world’s digital data is optimally suited to reside on secondary storage and this amount could reach nearly 7 ZBs by 2025. In response to this, the tape ecosystem has significantly expanded its capabilities in recent years. Tape has also become the leading pure storage solution to defend against cybercrime by seamlessly integrating air gap, encryption and WORM capabilities. Roadmaps signal that the trend of steady tape innovation will continue well into the future. Tape is the greenest storage technology and can significantly reduce carbon emissions and eWaste from data center operations. More large-scale tier 2 data centers are determined to contain their infrastructure costs and improve their sustainability metrics. They will be motivated to rethink existing data storage practices and take advantage of advanced magnetic tape as they approach exabyte scale. Combined with improved access times, faster data rates, a 50-year media life, lowest TCO and the highest device reliability, modern tape has the greatest potential to address the massive capacity demands of the zettabyte era.

To read the full report:

https://asset.fujifilm.com/www/us/files/2024-03/1cb09f4968e7adf72ce54d2ecfe2853b/Horison-Tape-New-Game-update-2024.pdf

Reading Time: 4 minutesJohn Monroe of Furthur Market Research, a long-time storage industry expert and former Gartner analyst, together with Brad Johns, storage industry expert on TCO and energy consumption, recently published a new report entitled “The Sustainable Preservation of Enterprise Data”. This report is a follow-up to John’s most recent report, “Preservation or Deletion: Archiving and Accessing the Dataverse” March 2023, and his initial report entitled “The Escalating Challenge of Preserving Enterprise Data”, August 2022. The new report is co-sponsored by Cerabyte, Fujifilm, and IBM.

This new and in-depth report looks at refined forecasts for enterprise storage capacity shipments through 2035 and the growing installed base of enterprise storage comprised of enterprise-grade SSD, HDD, tape and future emerging technologies (new forms of tape, ceramics, DNA, optical, silica, and others). The findings and conclusions in this report point to the fact that enterprise storage will consume more and more of the available data center power budget and that IT managers must soon proactively deploy fewer SSDs and HDDs and more tape and enterprise emerging storage technologies in the future. This will be required to be in alignment with the total availability of energy, constrained IT budgets and ecological goals. Below are some summaries and excerpts taken from the report and a link is provided to view/download the full report.

A Dataverse of Stunning Dimensions

At the end of 2022, a year in which storage demand declined in unprecedented ways, the dimensions of the active installed base of enterprise data stored on SSD, HDD, and tape media still grew to 4.8 zettabytes (or 4.8 thousand exabytes, or 4.8 million petabytes), up a staggering 53x over the 91,000 petabytes (or 91 exabytes) in 2010. Despite another year of downturn in 2023, the authors still estimate the active installed base of enterprise data will exceed a massive 40 zettabytes in 2035, up more than 475x over 2010.

Cool, Cold or Frozen Data Dominates

The problem with all of this enterprise data is that it is perceived to be too valuable now, or potentially will be too valuable in the future, to be deleted. According to the authors, at least 70%, or more probably 80% of enterprise data will become cold after 60 days and will continue to be “cool”, “cold” or “frozen,” with infrequent access times of minutes to days to weeks to years to decades, with little or no need for the performance of SSDs and HDDs, but with greatly expanding needs for Sustainability, Immutability, and Security (SIS), which SSDs and HDDs can neither cost effectively nor power efficiently fulfill.

Concern for Data Center Energy Consumption

The power demands of enterprise storage will continue to increase as a percentage of the overall data center energy budget. The report shows a shift in the percentage of the data center energy budget dedicated to storage from 17% in 2020 to 29% in 2035.  According to the authors, data center managers must learn to integrate more cost-effective and power-efficient storage technologies. There are already a multitude of CO2 emission compliance regulations in place throughout the world (with much stricter regulations in Europe) and growing scarcities of total available energy for datacenters in many areas. Healthy ecosystems have become more crucial considerations in all IT purchasing decisions, and many data center managers will soon be forced—by upper-level management or by compliance regulations—to use tape and various enterprise emerging technologies as ultra-low-cost, sustainable storage alternatives. The report shows that tape and emerging enterprise emerging technologies, also referred to as the “active archive” tier by the authors, will consume 99% less energy than primary storage tiers of SSDs and HDDs.

Total Cost of Ownership Savings and a Shifting of Exabytes

The rapid growth of the dataverse creates not only energy consumption and CO2 emissions challenges but also cost challenges. The costs of managing multi-zettabytes over increasingly lengthy time periods will continue to swell, causing a steady migration of data to the active archive tier. In 2035, the authors project that the 5-year costs per terabyte for an SSD system will be 33x (up from 16x in 2020) and an HDD system will be 8x (up from 2.4x in 2020) compared to the 5-year cost per terabyte for an active archive system. Based on the 2023 CapEx and OpEx estimates in the report, for every exabyte of cold or frozen data moved from HDD to tape storage, total costs can be reduced by more than $16 million over five years. The estimated annual energy costs will also drop by almost $1 million per exabyte, and annual CO2 emissions can be reduced by almost seven kilotons. These substantial cost advantages combined with far lower energy consumption, lead the authors to believe that tape and enterprise emerging technology shipments will display consistent growth through at least 2035 and will exceed combined SSD+HDD exabyte deliveries in 2034.

In Conclusion

With the advent of new tape and enterprise emerging storage technologies, the authors have forecast that active archive shipments will expand to comprise more than 50% of the fresh enterprise zettabytes delivered in 2034 and 2035. In the cool, cold and frozen enterprise data layers—which have little or no real need for the performance of SSDs or HDDs, but have greatly expanding needs for Sustainability, Immutability, and Security—the most cost-effective and power-efficient technologies will inevitably prevail, according to the authors, because they make the greatest fiscal and ecological sense.

To read the full report:

http://furthurdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Sustainable-Preservation-of-Enterprise-Data_V13.pdf

Reading Time: 7 minutesStorage industry analysts are saying that 2023 will be remembered for its historic downturn in demand. This may be so, due to hyperscaler digestion of previous year’s capacity shipments. But a few things remain constant, such as the growth of data driven by the proliferation of new applications in the digital data sphere and things like data intensive AI/ML. You can also add in the steady expansion of IoT including video surveillance applications. Another constant is the increasing value of data that users want to keep more of and for longer periods of time. Users also want ready online access to that data giving rise to the popularity of cost-effective and energy-efficient active archive solutions. So here are my highlights for 2023 and really bold predictions for 2024!

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Reading Time: 6 minutesI recently had the opportunity to visit a very unique data tape vault run by Vital Records, Inc. The location I visited is in Roxbury New Jersey, about an hour drive from New York City. What makes this tape vault known as VRI Roxbury, so unique is that it is 125,000 square feet of vault space situated between 30 and 50 feet underground. It was originally built by AT&T as a hardened command center bunker in the 1960’s. The facility is an intriguing blast from the past with relics of AT&T’s occupancy tastefully preserved. It was built to withstand natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires or dare I say, a nearby nuclear blast. In such an event, AT&T could continue to support the telecommunications needs of its clients, including the U.S. Military. So no expense was spared in building what is truly an engineering marvel below ground.

Vital Records purchased the facility in 1995 upon its decommissioning by AT&T and repurposed the space for protection and preservation of valuable enterprise data, most often in the form of millions of removable/portable data and video tapes. To say that the facility is fascinating would be an understatement. It is however, non-descript, at least upon arrival. VRI Roxbury is discreetly perched in the middle of desolate woods, atop a slight rise in the landscape, some 1,100+ feet above sea level, with nothing but a nameless security gate, a freshly painted parking lot, and a small anonymous structure housing an elevator entrance to accommodate pre-screened visitors and authorized employees at any time of day, 24/7.

Truth be told, this was not my first visit to VRI Roxbury. I had toured the facility some 20 years earlier while working for another data tape manufacturer. And while the facility has kept up with modern innovations such as security protocols including iris scans, temperature and humidity monitoring, hi-def video surveillance, new and improved inventory management techniques, it still essentially provides the same services today that it did 20 years ago. However, given several critical market dynamics, these services are more relevant today than ever before.

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Reading Time: 4 minutesAs both an active archive and tape evangelist, I’m excited to share how LTO (Linear Tape-Open) tape technology can transform video surveillance storage into a powerful, affordable, and long-term active archive solution. While there is a desperate need for more storage to support the proliferation of video surveillance applications, many in the video surveillance industry view the concept of “archive” as a burdensome process. But when done right with easy-to-use LTO tape systems, it becomes a strategic advantage in the form of an active archive.

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How long have you been working at Fujifilm and what is your role in the company?

I have been with FUJIFILM Data Storage division for 3.5 years now as Director of Marketing for the FUJIFILM branded Linear Tape Open (LTO) product line, and I’m located at the FUJIFILM North America headquarters in Valhalla, NY. Prior to being with Fujifilm, I spent 13 years in business aviation marketing making sure that sales take off!

What’s do you like most about your job?

I have really enjoyed installing a digital marketing infrastructure from the ground up. This is what we call the “DX project” and it involves a lot of new technology, processes and organizational improvements. This allows our sales & marketing teams to be more efficient and results in a better customer experience when seeking information about our products, services and value proposition. But I also like the creative side and the development of content that we use in the DX project.

Can you talk about some of your recent marketing campaigns?

Our current campaign is called “Built on Tape” and started in early 2023. This ANA Award-winning campaign features eye-catching creative and is designed to build awareness for the fundamental advantages of modern data tape. We believe organizations can build solid storage strategies with tape as a building block especially when it comes to cool or cold data. Hopefully readers of this blog page will have seen our banner ads throughout the IT world. 

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The IT industry is often described as “dynamic”. That is to say, constantly changing, and evolving. There is always a “flashy new thing” to grab our attention and distract us. That may be the case when it comes to data storage. With relatively new and flashy things like SSDs, who’s had the time to pay attention to good old tape technology and the its role in ransomware protection?

Actually, lots of big data managers have been paying very close attention to tape technology these days. The largest active archives and archival cloud services on the planet are based on modern generations of tape storage. For everyone else, there is a killer app that is rapidly raising awareness for good old tape and that is ransomware protection.

Leveraging the low data storage cost, removability and portability of today’s highly advanced tape technology turns out to be a great way to get copies of mission-critical data offline and offsite for the inevitable day when cyber criminals take control of an organization’s network and demand a hefty ransom payment.

As National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is upon us, it is worth reviewing the cybersecurity advice and best practices recommended by the government, regulatory agencies and insurance companies. So here are five reasons why data tape backups should be part of every organization’s cyber security and ransomware protection plans:

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Reading Time: 2 minutesBig data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, video surveillance, and social media are among some of the biggest trends in the technology industry driving the creation of massive data sets that need to be managed and retained.

A new report from the Tape Storage Council: Tape Is Primed for The Rise in Secondary Storage, looks at the current data growth and economic factors driving the demand for advanced solutions to effectively contain Petascale and Exascale requirements. Many organizations continue to store this data on more costly to operate HDDs (hard disk drives) which require constant power and cooling to maintain reliable operations.

However, as digital data creation continues to grow at 25% or more per year, at least 80% of the world’s digital data is lower activity data optimally suited for secondary storage. Secondary storage is persistent storage designed to keep less critical and less active data on more economical, secure storage mediums that don’t need to be accessed as frequently as data on primary storage.

In response to this challenge, the tape ecosystem has significantly expanded its capabilities in recent years. LTO tape capacity continues to increase as new magnetic particles like Barium Ferrite and Strontium Ferrite will help to scale tape areal density for decades to come and current roadmaps signal that the trend of steady tape innovation will continue well into the future. It’s time to rethink existing data storage practices and take advantage of advanced magnetic tape for delivering the most sustainable, cost effective, highly scalable, and reliable mass storage systems.

For more information the ransomware-resilient, long-term data archiving benefits of tape storage and to download the full report, visit https://tapestorage.org.

Reading Time: 4 minutesHaving lived most of my life in the Northeast, and having endured many cold and snowy winters, I was always jealous of the nice weather in California. Then to add to my jealousy, California was frequently referred to in the press as a “bellwether” state, particularly in politics. The term often applies to a geographic region where political tendencies might predict the eventual results for the entire country. In economics, a bellwether is a leading indicator of an economic trend.  When it comes to the data tape industry, I think it’s safe to say that the 50 TB tape system recently announced by Fujifilm and IBM is a bellwether for tape technology.  

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