In my previous blog posts, I talked about the advantages of data tape in terms of reliability and capacity and how tape plays a crucial role in supporting active archive systems. While these factors are key considerations in the merits of leveraging tape for tier 3 storage, cost effectiveness is a major factor that favors tape as well.
Leading analysts project that organizations will need to grow their data storage capacity dramatically in the coming years as a result of the explosion of unstructured file data, regulatory compliance and the need to keep data for longer periods in active archive mode. The numbers vary, but the consensus is around 50% data growth annually (there’s no recession in data creation!) Yet, IT budgets are barely increasing, so close attention is being paid to storage-related investments that can consume significant portions of CAPEX budgets. With OPEX budgets multiplying acquisition costs by several factors, it becomes clear that storing all data on disk drives is cost prohibitive from both an acquisition and an operations point of view.
In addition, the price of electricity to power and cool disk storage continues to climb, and some areas of the power grid are already over taxed, creating the problem of simply supplying the needed power to data centers.
TCO studies from leading analysts show tape systems cost less than disk. The Enterprise Strategy Group reported a 2-4X cost advantage in backup applications using LTO-5 compared to disk with de-duplication.
For long term archiving, The Clipper Group did a detailed TCO study and reported a 15X cost advantage for LTO-5 tape vs. disk in an archiving application over a 12-year period.
In yet another recent TCO study done by the Information Storage Industry Consortium, disk system acquisition prices turn out to be 9X more than the equivalent tape system for 500TB of storage over a five-year period.
When it comes to power consumption, tape is far greener than disk and this is where the real cost savings are to be found. The TCO study from The Clipper Group shows that disk consumes at least 238X more power than tape as data on tape consumes little or no energy, and tape does not require the significant energy associated with cooling spinning disks. In fact, Clipper showed that the cost of powering the disk solution over the 12-year period is the same as the cost of an entire tape solution including hardware, media and power!
Undoubtedly flash and disk technologies play a critical role in active archive systems for certain data applications, for example where rapid access time is important. But once again, studies show that anywhere from 60 to 90% of data is rarely accessed after 30 days. So it makes sense to move data from more expensive tiers of storage to the more cost-effective tape tier. And with active archive systems, the data remains accessible. Data storage that is efficient and always available – it’s the best of both worlds!