There were two pieces of recent news about tape storage which prove that tape is alive and well, and these articles highlight two reasons why tape has a bright future in 2022 and beyond.
Reason # 1: There are Excellent Use Cases for Tape for Long Term Data Archiving and as part of Cyber-Resilient Infrastructures
The first news is a report published in Enterprise Storage Forum: The Tape Storage Market in 2022 . This report reinforces why tape is more relevant than ever in 2022, and why enterprises and large cloud providers continue to turn to tape because of its unique benefits. In short:
- Tape has emerged as a key technology for long term data archiving and cold data storage. It can reliably store data for decades, and since most of the data being generated will be “cold” data – meaning inactive data that must be kept for a long time – tape is an ideal storage solution to help large enterprises manage costs and preserve access to this valuable inactive data.
- Tape is green. Although this is one of the benefits of tape for long term data archiving, it deserves its own call out. Tape consumes about 1/5th the power and cooling of HDD technology, and for any organization archiving data for many years, let alone decades, the costs of this add up. Power and cooling costs are rising, particularly in large metro areas, and many organizations are also considering the large environmental impact of powering large data centers. An infrastructure strategy that incorporates tape can address these issues.
- Tape is Secure. With the rise in ransomware and cyber-threats, it is no surprise that many organizations that have moved away from tape are now coming back. Keeping a backup copy, or archive copy of critical data on tape provides a secure location to recover from in the event of a ransomware attack. More on that below…
Reason # 2: There is plenty of opportunity for innovation in tape
The second bit of news is that a Quantum tape solution, Ransom Block , has been named one of the 10 Coolest Data Storage Products of 2021 by CRN .
Wait…what??? Tape is one of the coolest products in 2021???
You bet. Quantum Scalar Ransom Block is an industry-first and helps to address one of the most pressing challenges facing enterprises today – how to build cyber-resilient infrastructure. Ransom Block is the first solution to create a physical block between data tapes and the tape robotic system, providing the strongest air-gap solution possible. So although tape storage systems are inherently more secure than HDD or SSD storage systems, only Quantum tape libraries offer a full suite of features for cyber-protection and cyber-resilience. You can learn more about these features and how they are part of a comprehensive security framework here .
Quantum also introduced another breakthrough innovation earlier this year with ActiveScale Cold Storage . This is a new class of storage for ActiveScale systems that uses tape as the underlying storage medium. So users get a true object storage system, using S3 Standard and S3 Glacier API sets, and can now build an object store using any amount of HDD and tape storage, based on their needs. The entire solution can be deployed as-a-Service.
So the future for tape is bright, and Quantum is going to continue to innovate and lead in the use of tape for long term data archiving and cyber-resilient infrastructures.
The post Two Reasons that Tape Has a Bright Future Heading into 2022 and Beyond appeared first on Quantum Blog .