Piql White Paper - Magnetic Tape Technology in a Multi-node Archival Storage System

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The DPC do not provide any guidance on what IT storage media types (e.g. tape, disk RAID arrays, disk object storage) to use in a multi-node architecture. It is necessary then to make one’s own decisions based on the principals and on the information available. Any consideration will of course also consider factors such as: total cost, reliability, space and environmen- tal impact. Tape technology is used extensively within digital preservation systems for reason of its exceptional long-term cost/GB stored, footprint, power efficien- cy, reliability and portability. Where tape performs less well against disk based storage systems is on time to data (latency), so for many archival systems where access times a key, the first or primary node of the architecture will be disk based. Tape technology will continue to be an essential ele- ment of many multi-node digital preservation archi- tectures; in providing a low cost, reliable secondary node. However, a more heterogeneous set of charac- teristics may be advantageous in the overall selection of storage technologies for long-term digital preser- vation and in particular for the crucial final node.

This paper considers the current suitability of tapetechnologyasoneormorenodesof a multi-node preservation storage system. It specifically considers three areas which relate to the principals and factors described above:

1. Tape technology vendors and technologies

2. Tape technology reliability and the environmental factors that affect this 3. The effective lifetime of tape media