Sony and AIT-5.

Sony Electronics is now shipping its fifth generation of Advanced Intelligent Tape drives and attendant automation and media to OEMs and distribution channel partners. Sony kicked things off with a recent launch event in Los Angeles attended largely by resellers, distributors, and OEM partners.

With AIT-5, Sony has solved the backwards incompatibility issues that made for some industry grumbles with AIT-4. According to Alan Sund, general manager for tape storage at Sony, AIT offers the following benefits to users:

  In terms of capacity, the AIT family is the broadest product line in
  today's tape market. The line spans from 20GB native to 400 GB native,
  which allows for a very wide choice of capacity using the same tape
  family. In contrast, DDS goes from 20GB to 36GB, and LTO starts at
  about 100GB. AIT allows enterprise customers to standardize on a
  single tape format, with remote offices with small storage needs
  working off smaller capacity AIT tape and the data center with AIT-5.
  This also allows for standardized tape within the data center,
  allowing the enterprise to back up small-capacity applications onto
  smaller AIT drives, and use higher capacity AIT for larger application
  data.
  AIT combines high density with a 3-1/2" form factor. This is
  significant given today's server chassis going out in slim-line
  configurations. (Intel only goes out with a 3-1/2" drive bay.) LTO and
  SDLT require 5-1/4" in space, so if users want to stay with the space-
  saving alternative they are limited to DDS/DAT with smaller
  capacities, or they can go to AIT. This compact form factor works
  particularly well in crowded data centers where equipment must fight
  for space. Sony reports a very high reliability actor in their AIT
  tape drives, with an MTBF (meantime between failure) of 400,000 hours
  on a 100% duty cycle.
  AIT tape drives take 40% less power than some competing formats. With
  backup windows open day and night, tape drives are rarely powered
  down. A 40% reduction in consumption means very significant utilities
  savings over the long term.

Sony retains another advantage that other tape drive sellers do not have: the company manufactures and solely controls its own product. Sund said, "What that means to the end user is that we control our own destiny. If you don't manufacture these things yourself, you are dependent on other companies. Those companies must be the ones to support innovation. Since we do this ourselves, we control when we bring new products to the market. We already know that we're on track for the next generation." AIT-6 has a planned capacity of 800 GB native, and is expected to be complete in the next 2-2-1/2 years.

The AIT product family is not restricted to the enterprise, but serves users who require high capacity and high reliability, and also those users who require Read/Write DR and compliance capabilities such as WORM. At the SMB, enterprise remote offices and workgroups levels, AIT users primarily use tape drives and slim-line automation. Enterprise class AIT-5 fits into the corporate data center, often making up part of an enterprise offering from Sony's OEM partners. Sund said, "AIT5 is very well suited specifically to the enterprise class customer, especially the ones who require automation. Power consumption and small form factors allow for a very efficient use, as AIT-5 can pack a lot of data into a small footprint. Automation too is obviously a key point. This dovetails into the big industry trend of moving towards centralization and automation of data."

As an enterprise-class product, AIT-5 competes directly with linear format LTO-3 and SDLT. AIT is a helical scan technology with a 1" per second transfer speed, while linear tape format specifies a very high transfer rate of 295" per second. Sund explains why Sony does not see this as a problem: "Linear format competitors have followed an industry trend from a cost marketing perspective, where they're specifying a very high transfer rate of the drive. In reality, the majority of the systems out there cannot push the data fast enough to take advantage of that specification and a faster tape drive can actually cause the entire system performance to degrade. In these circumstances, if you have a buffer overrun because the system hasn't pushed the data onto tape fast enough, once the data has flown the 295 inches it has to go back and find its place again. This is detrimental to the system. AIT is moving more slowly and under less tension, which increases real life performance and reliability."

AIT-5 Technology

AIT-5 technology comes with 400 GB of native capacity (up to 1.04 TB with 2.6:1 compression based on the ALDC algorithm) in a single 8mm media cartridge. AIT-5 drives are now read and write backward compatible with standard read/write as well as WORM AIT-4, AIT-3Ex and AIT-3 media, so users can migrate to the higher capacity of AIT-5 without sacrificing access or compatibility with earlier AIT versions.

AIT-5 drives are multi-functional and support Write Once, Read Many capability when using AIT WORM media. Both standard read/write and WORM media cartridges are also now shipping to all channels. A full range of both OEM and Sony-branded AIT-5 products are now available, including internal drives, external drives, as well as desktop and slim 1U and 2U rack-mountable automation products.

"The AIT format continues to evolve and coincide with the growing needs of both small to mid-sized business users, while scaling up to meet the ever-expanding needs of enterprise customers," said Sund. "AIT-5 is now the highest density tape drive in the world, allowing our customers to manage fewer tapes and conserve space. It also consumes up to 40 percent less power than competing formats, and can thus help conserve energy and significantly lower total costs of ownership while offering exceptional reliability and meeting real world performance requirements."

According to Sony, it has worked closely with independent software vendors to test and certify compatibility of AIT-5 based products to ensure wide support and full interoperability with industry-leading backup and archival applications.

AIT-5 technology is characterized by data density, high capacity, helical-scan recording, a new media formulation with Advanced Metal Evaporated III tape, a Remote-Memory-In-Cassette chip, advanced MR head technology, Dynamic Tracking and WORM functionality.

Details

High Capacity and Performance -- Each 8mm AIT-5 media cartridge boasts a native capacity of 400GB, and up to 1.04TB with 2.6:1 compression. The 3.5-inch, half-height AIT-5 drive has a 96MB buffer to manage data throughput and minimize buffer overruns, and a sustained native transfer rate of up to 24MB/second that is optimized for the majority of Windows-based servers installed and shipping today.

Helical-Scan Recording Technology -- Based on a very stable rotating drum/head platform, helical-scan recording technology permits accurate and extremely reliable data recording at very high track densities. This efficient recording density is typically nearly five times greater than most linear-serpentine methods.

Advanced Metal Evaporated III Tape -- Based on AME III technology, AIT-5 media has a very high areal recording density as well as greater smoothness, high durability and reliability. AME III improves upon its predecessor, AME II, realizing high output and low noise through an improved evaporated method, resulting in even smaller magnetic particles and a smoother tape that minimizes the spacing loss between the magnetic head and the magnetic layer. A newly developed back coating technology with a new additive delivers a more friction-resistant surface, thus reducing guide friction and further improving reliability and long-term running stability.

Remote-Memory-In-Cassette -- Built into the AIT-5 data cartridge, R-MIC is a non-volatile chip that provides quick media loads and allows fast searches to data. The chip contains the tape's system log, search map and user-definable information, allowing the drive to quickly advance at a high speed directly to any file on the tape.

MR Heads -- AIT-5 drives employ more sensitive MR head technology with an increased signal output, promoting a higher level of data integrity, and enabling high performance and greater capacity per media cartridge as well as achieving backwards read and write compatibility with AIT-4, AIT-3EX and AIT-3 standard and WORM media.

Dynamic Tracking -- The four read heads use a new Dynamic Tracking system to control relative head position to the tape media with an actuator, enabling each head to trace the narrow track path for precise and accurate reading.

WORM Functionality -- AIT-5 drives are multi-functional, fully supporting both rewritable cartridges as well as WORM media. Sony claims to be the first to offer WORM functionality in the mid-range tape drive price point.

Reliability -- Features such as an automatic head cleaning system and a soft touch tape loading system mechanism support reliability. The drive cooling system is isolated from the tape mechanism, limiting airborne contaminants from entering the tape path and affecting reliability. An AIT-5 drive's mean time between failures (MTBF) is 400,000 hours at 100 percent duty cycle.

www.sony.com