Progress On All Sides.

As we approach the end of the year, it's useful to remember that this is all it is--the end of a year. True, the last day of the current decade will be December 31 and, equally true, the last day of the current century will also be the same day. Most people will also realize that on January 1, the day after the upcoming December 31, the year will again begin with the digit "2." The last time this was true was in the year 299 AD.

Don't expect any serious catastrophes--at least, not as a result of the rollover from one year (decade, century, take your pick) to the next. Time moves on, from one nanosecond to the next, from one minute to the next, from one hour to the next, from day to day, and so on, ad nauseum.

Still, for data centers, there may be concerns. The press has extensively covered these issues, and for the most part, Computer Technology Review has resisted jumping on the doom-and-gloom bandwagon. When your true goal is to serve the readers, rather than selling as many copies of your periodical as possible, useless sensationalism isn't important.

The Tape Wars will continue. All year, we've been covering these wars. In many cases, the war boiled down to DLT versus everything else or, perhaps more accurately, everything else vs. DLT.

This article looks at a few new developments in the ongoing quest to increase market share. The rise of AIT-2, the emergence of Mammoth-2, and the continuing progress of LTO--there's a lot to report.

AIT-2 Fights For 8mm Share

AIT-2, Sony's current generation of 8mm tape began shipping earlier this year, just a few months after the initial planned start of shipments. With a native capacity of 50GB and a native transfer time of 6MB/sec, it compares favorably to many other top-of-the-line tape technologies.

AIT-2 provides an array of innovative features that are currently uniquely available on AIT. Perhaps foremost is the Memory In Chip (MIC) capability that is available on AIT cartridges. This technology stores directory and file information onto a tiny chip that is built into the cartridge. A properly equipped automated tape system can determine the volume label, contents of the tape, and usage history simply by passing a reader over the cartridge. This method overcomes the requirement of some systems to physically load the tape in order to obtain this information and can conceivably provide more information than a barcode affixed to a cartridge.

Additionally, the use of MIC enables the creation of multiple partitions on the tape, if the backup software supports multiple partitions. For applications requiring fast access, using multiple partitions can enable a configuration that supports midpoint loading, a technique where the tape is started at the middle of the cartridge--the maximum distance for a data search is, conceivably, half the length of the tape. Mid-loading is a method that was announced for the LTO Accelis drives.

Sony's AIT-2 drives also claim full read/write compatibility with AIT cartridges. Data written using an AIT drive can be read by an AIT-2 drive. Somewhat unique is the interchangeability of data across different machine generations.

A few points should be made regarding this interchangeability. First, it only applies to AIT cartridges--an AIT-2 cartridge, written by an AIT-2 drive, won't be readable in an AIT drive, as should be expected. Upgrading to an AIT-2 drive in companies with legacy AIT drives provides an additional advantage: the AIT-2 drive can read and write data on an AIT cartridge faster than an AIT drive. When compared to the AIT drive's native 3MB/sec performance, the AIT-2's 4MB/sec performance is one-third faster. With the rapid increase on the amounts of data that are being managed by IT today, the extra speed and full compatibility may be compelling enough reasons to add AIT-2 drives to a company's backup systems, or, perhaps, even to replace AIT drives in automated systems with the faster AIT-2 drives.

Because Sony's AIT-2 was shipped slightly behind schedule, it is fair to wonder about the timetable for AIT-3, which was slated to come out in the 2000 timeframe. The AIT-3 is currently slated as having double the capacity (50GB native) and twice the performance (12MB/sec) of AIT-2. The move to Giant Magneto Resistance (GMR) heads has been speculated by sources close to the company as a possible enabler of this increased capacity and performance.

Mammoth-2

The Mammoth-2 from Exabyte will be Exabyte's peremptory assault on Super-DLT and other next generation, top of the line tape drives. Little has been hidden from the press in recent months and a press tour scheduled by Exabyte to announce the Mammoth-2 was planned for late September.

Based on the press announcement timeline, it is safe to assume that Mammoth-2 will become available by the end of the year. Exabyte, which pioneered 8mm tape more than a decade ago, has evolved considerably over the years.

In the beginning, Exabyte purchased what were basically 8mm video mechanisms from Sony. These mechanisms were tuned to provide the desired performance capabilities, and were specially modified for data storage. Although the 8mm and Hi-8 formats did not catch on as strongly as Sony desired (keeping volumes low and prices high), Exabyte did a good job of selling and OEM sales of its drives.

In recent years, Exabyte has taken a much more active part in manufacturing its drives, manufacturing or assembling most of the components itself. Its Mammoth drive was largely designed inside Exabyte--its delayed release damaged the company's reputation and allowed competitors to eat into its market share.

Mammoth-2, which has been widely announced for the past year or more, is expected to deliver capacities and performance that will be on a par, if not better, than SDLT. At a tour in the Exabyte factory this May, many of the pre-production components of Mammoth-2 were shown to me. Again, expectations of seeing actual product by year's end are probably not unrealistic. Although Exabyte has recently moved towards reinventing itself, both by consolidating workgroups (and reducing staff) and by creating its NetStorm unit (designed to assist its customers in developing SAN systems), the company probably bets most of its future on Mammoth-2 and possible future Mammoth generations. With the current availability of AIT-2, and the impending release of Mammoth-2, the 8mm tape wars may be approaching an intensity with no precedent in this particular media size.

Ultrium Gets Closer...

A few months ago, Linear Tape Open (LTO) may have referred to two different technologies, around which a consortium of companies were in active stages of development. Today, the situation is somewhat different--and more confusing than ever.

Originally, two formats were proposed, Ultrium, as a challenger to DLT, and Accelis, a high performance linear medium that was designed where fast data access was the key requirement. Perhaps not surprisingly, the three initial partners in the LTO adventure, Seagate Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, have thrown their development budgets at Ultrium, leaving the future of Accelis in doubt. As one IBM spokesperson told me a few months ago, even IBM has limited development resources and the clear choice for the investment is Ultrium. The market should initially be much larger for Ultrium than Accelis, if for no other reason that the amount of data being stored (and backed up) is mushrooming all over the place.

Fujitsu has been something of a silent fourth partner in the Ultrium race. In addition to manufacturing the tape drive mechanisms for the Ultrium products, which it apparently will sell to one or more of the initial LTO signatories, it has acquired a full development license, which allows it to manufacture and market a complete Ultrium mechanism.

The LTO consortium announced, months ago, that it had selected a test lab to perform certification of drives and media. With four companies eventually offering drives and even more companies manufacturing tape cartridges and tape media, the need for such a centralized, independent certification entity is critical to the acceptance of Ultrium.

The basic goal of the lab is to certify that a tape written by one vendor's drive can be correctly read and written to using the drive from any other vendor. For example, a tape written using a HP Ultrium drive was not readable or produced an unacceptable number of read errors when inserted in a Seagate drive. Such a situation may be entirely possible on drives adhering to the same specification, but having enough minor differences to make safe recovery and automatic interchangeability difficult.

A certification lab that will do a broad range of compatibility testing, using standardized criteria, has been selected and is developing its tests. Unless the industry can be absolutely confident of the read/write compatibility across drive makers, Ultrium will have a difficult, if not impossible, task of winning market acceptance.

The LTO Consortium is taking no chances. In addition to certifying drives, it is also requiring that media be certified. The goal is to avoid any situations where a particular cartridge works in most drives, but won't work in a particular drive. The goal, as above, is to make certain that everything works with everything else.

In late September, I was told that drives were about to be sent to the labs for certification. A few weeks later, another source said that neither drives nor media had yet been submitted to the labs. Although there will probably be a lot of Ultrium drives demonstrated (or displayed) on the Comdex show floor, based on the latest information, it appears unlikely that Ultrium drives will ship to OEMs any time this year.

The LTO forces may have an additional challenge once the drives become available--product differentiation. While it's relatively easy to think Sony when somebody specifies AIT, or to think Exabyte when somebody specifies Mammoth, when somebody specifies Ultrium, it may be difficult to think which manufacturer to specify. Differentiating drives with the same basic name and similar capacities from the competition is a challenge that marketing departments at the four manufacturers will soon face.

Super-DLT

Quantum has been relatively quiet about Super-DLT, acknowledging progress and discussing basic specifications, but remaining pretty imprecise about the actual launch date. With Comdex coming in a few weeks, the company may be a bit more forthcoming about SDLT. We'll let you know.