What is LTO tape technology? | Ultrium LTO (original) (raw)

Linear Tape Open (LTO), also known as the LTO Ultrium format is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format that is optimized for high capacity, maximum storage density and performance. Since the first LTO products were brought to market, over 5.6 million drives [1], 371,232,918 cartridges and 517,958 Billion GB of media capacity have been shipped, making LTO Ultrium the most successful tape format in history.

Tape offers many benefits, including impressively high restore rates based on any specific configurations for very large volumes of data. LTO technology has become the de facto tape format standard worldwide, and tape systems can integrate with multiple systems onsite or offsite, including many on-premise/private cloud solutions.

IDC White Paper, sponsored by the LTO TPCs Tape and Cloud: Solving Storage Problems in the Zettabyte Era of Data

July 2019

The Tape Advantage

LTO technology is unrivalled as a low-cost, high capacity, reliable, portable and secure solution for data protection. LTO tape complements disk, flash and cloud solutions in tiered storage architectures, providing a low-cost, last line of defence against ransomware and disaster in the bottom tier. Offline copies of LTO tapes separate data archives from the connected environment. Systems can be restored using clean tape copies of the data following security breaches and catastrophic events. Whether you’re archiving big data for analytics, managing hours of digital video or simply transporting large data files from premises to the vault, LTO tape offers cost-effective, high-performance storage for the most demanding applications.

A Technology You Can Trust

The LTO Ultrium format is backed by the most respected names in the storage industry, providing an open format to enable interoperability between drives and media from multiple licensed vendors. Organizations have the freedom to choose any combination of drives, libraries and cartridges without the risk of being locked into proprietary technology.

With a well-defined roadmap stretching to generation 14, LTO Ultrium offers a safe investment and the scalability to manage fast-growing data volumes in organizations large and small.

1 IDC Tape Worldwide Factory Out Report