TechValidate voice of the customer research

The value of tape from those who know it best

Introduction

The most authentic voice is always that of the customer. Or in this case, many customers. A few months ago, HPE undertook some market research as part of the independent TechValidate program to find out what experiences our end users were having with HPE StoreEver tape and how we could use that information to better help them with their data protection challenges. The survey results were very positive. From small businesses to Fortune 500 companies across all industries and geographies, we’ve heard real-world stories about how customers are putting StoreEver to work.

The Value Of Tape

By 2025, it’s estimated that the digital universe will extend to 175 ZB1, creating a number of different data protection challenges for businesses of every kind.

HPE StoreEver LTO tape still has a vitally useful role in addressing these challenges for a number of reasons:

  • It offers extremely low total cost of ownership for storing vast quantities of infrequently accessed or archive data.
  • It is easily scalable and has a proven technology roadmap able to keep pace with the explosive growth of data.
  • It offers unique advantages as a last line of defence against cyber-attack due to its ability to be managed in an offline state, behind a physical air gap.

Case Studies

Meeza

Encodan

Light Iron

Oil States International, Inc

Words Of The Customer

We have been using HPE StoreEver for over 10 years in our data center environment and it has proven invaluable for stability, reliability, support and compatibility. HPE StoreEver has been our consistent “go-to” even as our software solutions have changed over time.

IT Systems Analyst, Global 500 Chemicals Company

New Innovations, New Horizons For Tape

Has the role of tape changed in the era of cloud and hybrid IT? Absolutely.

But does this mean that tape no longer has a role to play in data protection and archiving? Absolutely not!

There is no “one size fits all” approach to digital data storage. Tape continues to thrive because – as the TechValidate study confirms – it offers choices and answers to problems that no other storage technology satisfies in the same way. Customers recognise this.

Instead of being pressured into thinking about archival storage as if it were a binary choice, enterprises should consider their long term data retention needs in terms of tape and cloud/disk/flash/hyperconverged, not tape or those other technologies.

Secure

Secure

Tape provides an air gap to block the spread of ransomware. According to ESG, 60% of organisations report experiencing at least one attempted ransomware attack in the last 12 months2. By utilising tape, customers can create an air gap to ensure they have a clean copy of their data. Malware can’t infect data it cannot access.

Innovation

Innovation

Tape should remain an essential part of the storage landscape because data is growing faster than HDD capacity technology curves. This is driven by physical constraints like the superparamagnetic limit. It could be technically challenging, environmentally sensitive and cost prohibitive to completely replace tape with massive, disk-based data warehouses in the cloud.3

Cost of ownership

Cost of ownership

Over an extended period, LTO technology offers a reliable and cost-effective data retention solution compared with current generations of all-disk and all-cloud storage solutions. The latest generation, LTO-8, offers the reliability that organisations expect from tape media, while offering increased capacity and performance at a lower price per TB – by up to 86% in the case of disk and 66% in the case of cloud.4

Sustainable Business

Accelerating business insight

Some of the perceived benefits of cloud or object storage may be neutralised as the namespace expands to contain millions or even billions of objects. Latency, metadata quality and redundancy become critically important to preserve the integrity of the archive. Depending on the type of data being retrieved, a local tape library may stream large, connate data sets at speeds far greater than those witnessed using inexpensive SATA disk. As always, it’s a case of using the right storage, for the right purpose at the right time. It’s not the answer to everything, but tape can help organisations that are struggling with massive data storage, analysis, and recovery requirements. It’s about accessibility. And accessibility is not synonymous only with cloud or disk storage.

HPE StoreEver has saved my business thousands and increased our data security.

Lynn Murphy, System Administrator, Endocan

HPE StoreEver family

HPE StoreEver MAL 1/8 Tape Autoloader

StoreEver MSL 1/8 Tape Autoloader

The HPE StoreEver MSL 1/8 0-drive tape autoloader supports one LTO drive and eight slots in a 1U form factor to provide cost-effective, easy-to-install, unattended and automated tape storage. You can now reuse your existing MSL tape drive upgrade kits for added investment protection.

MSL2024

StoreEver MSL2024 tape library

Addresses the data protection and retention needs of your remote or entry-level storage environments with scalable capacity up to 720 TB with LTO-8 and simple web-based management.

MSL2040

StoreEver MSL3040 tape library

Protect the data assets of your small to midsized business for the long term with the HPE MSL3040 tape library. With a flexible, modular design and up to 8.4 PB storage capacity with LTO-8, the MSL3040 provides complete data protection and security.

MSL6480

StoreEver MSL6480 tape library

Sets the new standard for mid-range tape automation with best-in-class scalability to 16.8 PB with LTO-8. Its density and performance meet both short-term backup and disaster recovery needs as well as long-term retention requirements.

The Bigger Truth

For almost twenty years, HPE has been at the forefront of LTO tape storage innovation to help customers with their data protection challenges:

  • Introducing Write Once Read Many (WORM) technology with LTO-3.
  • Developing Linear Tape File System (LTFS) in LTO-4 to make HPE LTO as simple and easy to use as disk.
  • Providing powerful encryption for enhanced security with LTO-5.
  • And delivering capacities of up to 30 terabytes for the latest HPE LTO-8 data cartridges.

And all underpinned by HPE’s unique quality standards for LTO Ultrium data cartridge reliability.

After shipping more than 100 million HPE LTO cartridges, our customers trust HPE StoreEver LTO tape solutions to protect their data and keep it secure.

HPE believes that HPE StoreEver LTO tape is an essential part of helping businesses build a successful hybrid IT strategy.

And as the TechValidate study demonstrates, our customers believe it too.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise logo

Secure, scalable, and low cost storage solutions that protect your data behind an air gap and help you neutralize the impact of ransomware attacks.

More TechValidate Infographic (PDF)

Source: Tape and Cloud: Solving Storage Problems in the Zettabyte Era of Data (IDC, June 2019)

Source: ESG Master Survey Results, 2020 Technology Spending Intentions Survey, January 2020

Source: INSIC Applications and Systems Roadmap, 2019

Source: Quantifying the Economic Benefits of LTO-8 Technology, ESG, August 2018