Tape Storage Adoption for Data Archiving, Long Term Data Retention Grows

Overland Storage, a provider of data management and data protection solutions across the data lifecycle recently conducted a nationwide survey of its customers in the United States to learn more about how they use Overland tape libraries. The results of the survey indicate that tape storage remains a critical component of the data center. Half of respondents said that their business could not manage without tape storage and 56 percent of respondents said they keep data on disk for a month or less before moving it to tape.

Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of respondents are using tape storage for onsite backups and 63 percent are using tape storage for offsite backups and disaster recovery, according to survey results, and 80 percent of respondents do not believe that archiving to the cloud will replace tape storage.

"Industry analyst research, Overland Storage customer survey data and the overall growth in the tape storage marketplace confirm that tape-based storage remains a critical part of any data protection strategy due to its cost of ownership, portability, lower energy consumption, long shelf life, robust design and compact footprint advantages," said Peri Grover, director of marketing for tape solutions at Overland Storage. Fueling the current expansion of the tape storage market is an increased demand for flexible solutions designed to address rapid business data growth combined with the increasing acknowledgment of tape's cost-effectiveness over de-duplicated disk, the report noted. 

Research from analysts at IT research firm Enterprise Strategy Group also indicates tape is the predominant storage media used for data protection due to its portability and, from an acquisition cost perspective, its price. As tape capacities continue to out-ship disk capacities and "the use of tape now dominates archiving over internal disk, external disk or cloud... tape's lead is expected to grow during the next five years, demonstrating 45 percent annual growth by 2015."

Overland also announced the availability of NEO 600s and NEO 800s, two additions to its line of automated tape libraries aimed at offering more choices for tape deployments in the tape storage market. NEO 600s and NEO 800s are designed to help solve data storage protection challenges. The NEO 600s packs up to 216TB of backup and archive capacity into a 6U form factor while NEO 800s provides up to 244TB in an 8U form factor.

In addition to high-capacity storage, the 600s and 800s feature multi-drive support. Utilizing LTO-5 tape drive technology, NEO 600s and 800s allows businesses to leverage the efficiencies of new linear tape file system (LTFS) technology. The NEO 600s and NEO 800s solutions are available with a starting of $14,499 and are included in Overland's "Trade Up and Save" promotion, which offers customers up to $2,000 in cash rebates for a limited time.