News

posted on 15 July 2008 09:58

HP and Sony are going to work together on the seventh generation of DAT tape technology: DAT 320.

The format, the follow-on from the current DAT 160, will hold 320GB of data at a 2:1 compression ratio - hence 160GB native - and is meant to transfer data at 8MB/Sec, 3MB/sec faster than DAT 160.

DAT is a helical format, with the tracks laid out in successive and parallel diagonal paths across the tape instead of being parallel to the longitudinal axis of the tape. Tape formats such as the very-recently introduced Sun T10000B and IBM's TS1320 with 3592 media, as well as LTO-4, all employ longitudinal tracks. Sony's AIT and S-AIT formats both use a helical track layout as does the DAT format.

Bob Wilson, VP and GM for HP's Storage Platforms Division, said: "The DAT 320 offers customers and partners a data protection solution that delivers unmatched performance and capacity. Combining the expertise of two industry leaders that share a legacy of delivering proven DAT/DDS technology will result in a new standard for tape archiving with the low cost of ownership and reliability DAT customers have grown to expect.”

Masayoshi Sugiyama, president of the Chemical Device Business Group, Sony, said: “Demand for higher-capacity data backup and archiving continues to be important for small and midsize businesses and enterprise environments. Combining HP’s technical base, which includes six DAT generations, and Sony’s 50-year history in magnetic recording technology, including Metal Evaporated based media, will provide a compelling solution to meet the demands of higher-capacity and easy-to-manage data protection.”

Tape Format Consolidation

AIT-4 has a maximum capacity of 200GB native and AIT-5 reaches 400GB. DAT 320 won't reach that. AIT-4 and -5 both have a 24MB/sec I/O speed and so are superior to DAT 160 and DAT 320 on capacity and speed counts.

Sony's support of DAT suggests that the same format consolidation seen in the mid-range tape field, where LTO formats have destroyed the market prospects for Quantum's DLT formats, with Quantum throwing in the DLT towel and joining the LTO Consortium, imay be happening in the low end tape space.

According to this line of thinking Sony has recognized that DAT has the market momentum which its proprietary AIT format does not. Therefore we might predict that AIT format development slows and then ceases with Sony transferring its focus to DAT.

Can Sony, in these Stringer-led times, afford to develop two tape formats? Adam Mayer, a Sony tape product marketing spokesperson, said: "We are still very much committed to the AIT technology. We see an opportunity for both formats. We do see both technologies: DAT 320; and AIT, still existing. The (AIT) roadmap is still current and still stands."

He positioned DAT 320 as an upgrade for the DAT installed base and similarly positioned AIT-5 and -6 as an AIT installed base upgrade path.

We may hope for a transfusion of Sony AIT I/O speed into the DAT 320 mix and see a jump in DAT I/O rates. Mayer said: "As far as I am aware there is no direct plan to do this. I guess, technically, it's possible."

DAT 320 Details

The new DAT 320 format will use the wider DAT tape introduced with DAT160. This together with the tape's length and the linear bit density, meaning thinner tracks, will contribute towards the increase in capacity. One challenge that the development engineers have to overcome is keeping the narrower and closely packed tracks straight so that the read/write head servo system can follow them precisely.

DAT has now progressed partway to becoming an open standard in the LTO model, where three suppliers: HP; IBM; and Quantum' build drives independently to the single LTO standard, thus giving the customers freedom from being locked in to a single drive supplier. Now both HP and Sony will independently build and sell, through their various channels, DAT 320 drives and cartridges providing customers with a 2-supplier choice of drive supplier. They may well add distinctive value through their own controller firmware code. Other partners can apply to obtain license rights as well.

DAT 320 drives will be backwards-compatible with DAT 160 media and user a smaller amount of power, emphasising their green credentials. They are aimed at small and midsize businesses as well as enterprises with remote offices who use tape to archive and back up data as a component of their disaster recovery strategies. IDC forecasts the tape market will generate more than $1.4 billion in 2009. HP and Sony assert that the industry is experiencing healthy performance since tape provides SMBs with a cost-effective storage solution to handle the massive increase in digital data.

IDC Tape and Removable Storage research director, Robert Amatruda, said: “The use of tape storage to support backup and archiving is very popular and the doubled capacity with the DAT 320 will be an ideal choice for small to midsize businesses who have limited space for extra hardware.”

More information about models, configurations, feature sets and prices will be announced by the companies separately. General availability is expected in 2009.

PS. HP also has a removable disk drive offering for SME backup. Its positioning with DAT is described here.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}