Tape storage in a large data age

The writer Brian Truskowski is the general manager of IBM Systems storage and networking in IBM systems and technologies. Responsible for the profitability of strategy, product development, marketing, sales support, and IBM's storage and network business plans.

According to IDC's research, 2011, the global total generated digital information over 1.8 zettabytes. That amount is 9 times times higher than it was five years ago and is expected to double every two years. No matter how you look at Big data, big data does become a growing concern for businesses of all sizes.

Business and financial markets need better, faster and cheaper, affordable technology. If we need to identify a historical point of time as a milestone in changing the direction of the computer system, it is hard to argue that the birth of the first tape storage system.

Although there was a lot of experimentation at the beginning of the development of the computer industry, and there was a great deal of innovation, it was fair to say that without the innovation of the IBM Engineers team 60 years ago, there would be no birth of the digital storage industry as we know it today. Innovation allows large-scale computing machines to save their digital results on reel tapes instead of punched cards, creating new ways to view and understand digital information.

Storage challenges

To understand the value of this innovation, it is important to remember that in the the 1940s and 50, computing and processing were no longer a problem, and the challenge was to store the results. In the first few years, the only recordable technology for a large scale computing system was "physical media": Hard-copy books, papers, punching cards. But it is clear that these systems are not sustainable to achieve high-performance storage solutions.

After that, IBM's engineers began to switch to a new technology: tape technology. The technology has been used to capture audio, to record bulky computing systems, but not to be durable enough. When large reels are used to capture computer data, the powerful engine of the tape drive is easy to suddenly start and stop, causing breakage.

Tape improvements

IBM engineers solved the problem. On May 21, 1952, the company released its first production computer, IBM 701, and released an accompanying storage system that represents a breakthrough in tape. IBM's 726 is a 935-pound behemoth, creating a buffer between the start and stop by using a loose tape of a "vacuum column", which solves the problem of breakage. The U-Ring loose tape allows the tape to be better absorbed and facilitates faster start and stop systems.

The vacuum column innovation is not only quite successful, but also widely used by high-performance tape drive manufacturers, making it the most widely used computer technology in the 20th century. The technology has become so popular that its image of starting and stopping, as well as the tape system that rolls to the roll, has become iconic, albeit an informal image, but it symbolizes the "computer" news and entertainment of a generation.

Researchers continue to drive research and development

Today, tape technology and technology have developed to a very alarming level. For example, as early as 1952, our IBM 726 had reached 2.3MB capacity. Today a single tape can hold up to 4TB, or about 2 million times capacity. One of the reasons for this rapid development is the persistence of great work over the years, which has left research facilities around the world still. In 2009, for example, the scientists ' research at IBM Zurich broke the tape density record density of the advanced prototype tape recording data at 29.5 billion bits per square inch (see the YouTube video for more information). One of these advances may result in a single cartridge holding up to 35TB of uncompressed data.

Other advances such as the IBM Linear Tape file system (LTFS), using tape http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/6926.html "> Management capabilities bring great convenience, such as drag and drop and tagged files, more intuitive search , in addition to enabling businesses such as T3media to handle large data with tape. T3media (formerly Thought Equity Motion, Inc.) is a company that provides cloud computing video management and licensing services, with more than 10 million hours of content to manage. In addition to using tape storage capacity content, LTFS management, enhanced reliability, T3media companies also save a lot of costs due to the inherent cost of saving energy for tape. Unlike a spinning hard drive, it must remain plugged in and the tape system can be activated only when it is plugged in, thus providing a much lower carbon footprint.

Tape back to new role

The challenges of the 2012 are completely different from those of 1952. Today's challenge has become a dynamic change, such as social media, mobile computing, regulation, yes, large numbers have brought in hundreds of years of difficult digital traffic jams. Some reports say that by 2015, a large number of digital information needed to be stored will be more than 8 zettabytes. These trends and forecasts force each industry to manage the storage infrastructure more carefully than before. For many companies, tape is playing a new and important strategic role.

But to be sure, successful companies will be those actively adopting the most advanced strategic storage technologies: from advanced tapes to solid-state, from virtualization and cloud services. Enterprises that increase efficiency, minimize risk, reduce costs, improve access speed, and enhance security. It will also be those that use the solution to provide a larger classification of data, since not all data is created equally and will not maintain the same relevance over time.

This is the path to a new era of intelligent computing, the next frontier storage space, including more intelligent storage.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)