Tape's efficiency as an ILM compliance solution: an interview with Steve Solomon of Fujifilm.

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) has become an important part of today's data storage environment. This data management scheme refers to a "tiered storage" technique to manage data from its creation to disposal, based on both the age of the data and its value to the business. ILM offers an efficient, cost-effective way to store digital information and content by assigning availability of data consistently with its importance. This allows companies who use ILM to continuously evaluate the validity of their data.

Steve Solomon, senior vice president and general manager. Recording Media Division, Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc., shared his thoughts with us about the role of tape storage in today's world of ILM.

Why is ILM important?

ILM is a method to store information to the most cost-effective media based on the importance of the information to the operations of a company. A set of transactional or database records that need to be readily accessible should be stored on a high-performance magnetic disk, while other data that is ready to be archived should be stored to a less costly tape cartridge. To improve efficiency even further, ILM should be automated whereby the transfer of data from primary disk to tape is seamless. Policies for all data would have to be determined to inform the application of how much storage space to allocate and on what media the data is to be stored. As the amount of data to be stored grows, there is an even greater need to comply with the mandates of keeping the records online, near online, or offline. ILM is not just a technology or product, but the process of record retention.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

What is tape's role in ILM?

In the digital world's infancy, storage meant backing up data just in case something terribly bad happened to the company. It was an insurance policy you hoped never needed to be cashed in--and it was treated as such. Today, businesses change so quickly, markets fluctuate hour by hour and companies need to coordinate sales, procurement and distribution around the world. That requires real information, in real-time--and sometimes needing to look back to see ahead. The need for companies to protect business critical data and to implement disaster recovery solutions has never been greater. Research studies have said that as many as seventy percent of companies go out of business after a major data loss.

Adopting an ILM philosophy allows you to choose from the variety of storage technologies to most effectively identify, catalog and store the various data in an enterprise. Data centers generally have several different tiers of storage located within the same center and sometimes these tiers are not effectively used to store data. It's either too costly to store the asset or the system doesn't allow you to properly access the data.

Over the years, media manufacturers have put a lot of engineering capital and research dollars into making tape one of the most cost-effective long-term storage options. Today, tape systems are integrated closely with online disk backup, complementing the immediacy of the disk with enormous capacities at transfer speeds that are actually faster than disk. And the removable format makes it a no-brainer for data that needs to be backed-up, archived or stored off site. Properly integrated into an ILM strategy, tape storage takes place in the background, maximizing enterprise utilization.

How are the new regulations, such as Sarbanes Oxley, impacting storage and archive systems?

In addition to forcing data center managers to think longer term about handling corporate information, most compliance regulations (such as HIPAA and SARBOX) require that companies retain documents and records for an average of five to ten years. Tape manufacturers have spent quite a bit of time and resources over the years ensuring tape not only performs consistently and reliably, but also maintains its integrity for much longer than necessary. Handled properly, data on storage tape will be protected for 30 years.

ILM allows data managers to set systems to automatically catalog type of data before it's sent to storage. In the United States, some storage subsystems must comply with SEC Rule 17a-4, a federal regulation that requires maintaining data for long periods, in a form that cannot be altered. With the need for recovery in addition to maintaining data integrity, the ability to physically remove a tape cartridge and take it somewhere else makes it a great ILM component.

In addition to having superior cost-effectiveness, tape systems offer scalability so additional storage can be added with additional drives and tape cartridges without needing a major infrastructure change.

What is Fujifilm's role in ILM?

Today, strong ILM solutions aren't based on disk or tape, but both. Fujifilm has been a technology partner to tape drive developers for years, and helped the industry evolve and create greater synergies between disk and tape storage. Our engineers have created innovative coating technology to create thinner, stronger media that maintain precise signal strength and data retention. These coatings are behind many of today's leading storage media, such as our ATOMM (Advanced super Thin-layer & high-Output Metal Media) coating on DDS, DLTtape, Super DLTtape, and LTO Gen 1-3. Our Nanocubic technology applies nano-scale particles in a unique way to enable extremely high capacity, high reliability enterprise storage. The IBM 3592 TotalStorage system already integrates Nanocubic as will new products from StorageTek and future generations of LTO Ultrium media.

For ILM, Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) functionality is critical. We've WORM-enabled our tape cartridges via an embedded servo signal and a WORM cartridge memory chip. Drive firmware can identify a WORM cartridge from a standard data cartridge. Fujifilm also designed a built-in memory module that uses non-contact flash memory to record diagnostic and media handling information, such as file location and usage data.

It is also critical for the industry to continually think ahead for its customers. Preparing the media so it's ready for use before it's shipped to the customer saves the customer time and ensures that the media is initialized with information such as library system and header format onto the tape cartridge. Fujifilm provides a label and initialization (L & I) program as a value-add for our customers. So, when the customer receives the media, the customer gets product that is ready to use.

What is the future for tape and ILM?

While tape is used to back up the data center systems on a regular basis, there is a growing need to shrink the backup window. As part of ILM, secondary disk cache is being used to stage data before being sent to tape. This process allows maximum efficiency in the backup process. So, instead of speed and throughput, future technology is focusing on capacity, cost and security.

Speed is no longer the primary focus since most tape drives operate faster than the incoming data rates, and in fact, tape drives have to slow down. But the amount of data being generated isn't slowing down. We're working with industry partners to continue developing new coatings, media and manufacturing techniques to maintain next-generation capacity at expected cost and performance. With tape's capacity already moving to greater than 1TB per tape cartridge, full backups (generated by secondary disk storage), archiving, and disaster recovery applications will use tape in addition to incremental backup and recovery operations.

The role of tape is becoming more critical to specific applications as the backup process becomes more comprehensive. In fact, today's tape technologies allow system administrators to back up more data, more frequently. The use of tape remains the best way to store data efficiently and securely, thereby ensuring data integrity and recovery from any business disruption.

What challenges lie ahead for data center managers and infrastructure strategies?

Business is global, and it's evolving. Communications are now immediate through e-mail, phone and video applications. Entertainment is becoming personalized. Nearly every segment of every market is seeing the amount of digitized content increase many fold quarter to quarter--a trend that is only going to increase as corporate and consumer bandwidth capability grows. This means a tremendous amount of data that will need to be handled, managed--and in most cases--archived.

The industry has done a pretty good job of providing a variety of tools for consideration. And for the most part, managers can create a best of breed system for their business or industry. But, storage managers need to consistently think five to ten years down the road. How will their businesses grow? Where will the information come from and how vital is it to the business? And, what needs to be secured for possible regulatory compliance?

We will soon be talking about single backups at one terabyte and greater. It's amazing to think about how fast this industry has grown, but the changes have been exciting and we look forward to what the next wave brings.

www.fujifilm.com

RELATED ARTICLE

"There are four key advantages of tape," says Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner of the Data Mobility Group. "First, tape is removable so it can be stored to prevent corruption. Second, tape is transportable and moved off-site for added protection. Third, the capacity and performance as well as the reliability continue to be improved each year. Lastly, tape remains the most cost-effective storage technology (not just the initial acquisition cost but also the operational costs) whereby tape libraries take up less floor space, use one-tenth the power consumption, and are scalable by adding capacity using data cartridges instead of costly hardware."

McAdam adds "Regulatory compliance has affected the largest public companies. These companies are required to adhere to strict rules for long-term storage. WORM tape doesn't allow the data to be modified while data can be stored for about 30 years. Together with ILM, tiered storage, solid performance, and best value proposition, tape will be a viable data storage option for years, if not decades, to come."