Developments in Tape Storage and Suitability for HPC Environments

Tape in High PerformanceComputing EnvironmentsSteve Mackey SpectraLogic

Rethinking Disk & Tape Strategies…Organisations using disk-only storageDecreasedlast year13%Plan to start using tapefor interim storage 58%Plan to start using tapefor long-term archiving 68%•Media &Entertainment•Healthcare•HighPerformanceComputing•Life Sciences•SurveillanceSource: Fleishman-Hillard Research for the Linear Tape Open (LTO) Program• Cost• Density• EnergyConsumption• Performance• Security• Persistence/lifespan• Portability• Reliability

2011 INSIC Tape Applications System Report“Tape has been shifting from its historical role ofserving as a medium dedicated primarily toshort-term backup, to a medium that addressesa much broader set of data storage goals,including:– active archive (the most promising segment of marketgrowth),– regulatory compliance (approximately 20% - 25% ofall business data created must be retained to meetcompliance requirements for a specified and oftenlengthy period), and– disaster recovery, which continues in its traditionalrequirements as a significant use of tape.”

Active ArchiveActive Archive provides an affordable, onlinesolution to access and store all created data.An archive that contains production data, nomatter how old or infrequently accessed,that can still be retrieved online. It may existon both disk and tape.4

Active ArchiveExtended FileSystem

Disk Will Be Squeezed• Speed of access• Cost• Energy consumption• Cost• Energy consumption• Long term archive• SecurityMemory SystemsDisk ArraysTape2011 2020

Tape Requirements for HPC environments• Extreme scalability for single system active archive• Performance– Scalable drive counts for very high throughputs– Multiple robots to support high daily cartridge exchanges– Optional „enterprise‟ drive support• Reliability– Tape read reliability– Media lifecycle management– Media replication, RAIT• System Redundancy & Serviceability– Robot, robotic interface, robotic controller, PSUs, dual port drives, global hotspare drives, assisted self maintenance• Storage Density• Energy Consumption• Cost per TB

Specifications – Drive ModelsFeature IBM TS1140 Oracle T10000 C LTO-5Capacity (Native) 4.0 TB 5.0 TB 1.5 TBTransfer Rate (Native)250 MB/s 240 MB/s 140 MB/sR/W Compatibility R/W TS1130 Reformatted TS1120R only T10000BR only T10000AR/W LTO-4R only LTO-3Power Consumption 51 Watts 67 Watts 27 Watts(No sled)Interfaces 8 Gb FC 4 Gb FC 8 Gb FC FICON* FICON 4 Gb FCLibrary Compatibility IBM TS3500 SL8500 Spectra Libraries IBM TS3400 SL3000 IBM Libraries IBM TS3494 Oracle Libraries Spectra T-Finity Quantum LibrariesMedia Sources Two One MultipleMTBF 237,000 N / A 250,000Load / Unload Cycles 300,000 >150,000 100,000

Tape Drive Technology In Use• ≈75% of HPC Market Utilizes Open Tape Technology• ≈25% of HPC Market Utilizes Proprietary Tape Technology

LTO Tape Roadmap Todayhttp://ultrium.com/technology/roadmap.htmlAnnounced April 14, 2010

Future of Tape Capability SecuredJanuary 22, 2010:• ―The scientists at IBM Research – Zurich, in cooperationwith the FUJIFILM Corporation of Japan, recorded dataonto an advanced prototype tape, at a density of 29.5billion bits per square inch — about 39 times the areal datadensity of today's most popular industry-standard magnetictape product*.• ―These new technologies are estimated to enable cartridgecapacities that could hold up to 35 trillion bytes (terabytes)of uncompressed data*.* http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/10/storage.html

Density / Capacity• Tape - 4.3 PB+ per Sq. M. (Terapackdesign, TS1140 technology)• High Density NAS - 1.5 PB / Sq. M.• 4x – 5x increase in tape density in 5years (20 TB tapes).TerapackDesign

Energy―The disk system costs over 25 times more money to power and cool than asimilar tape system.‖ -Clipper Group, 2007 , (5-year cost comparison to SATAdisk)Tape and Disk Costs – What it Really Costs to Power the Devices―The energy cost ratio for a terabyte stored long-term on SATA disk versusLTO-4 is about 290:1.‖ -Clipper Group, 2008, (5-year cost comparison to D2Dbackup)Disk and Tape Square off Again – Tape Remains King of the Hill with LTO4―The cost of energy alone for the average disk based solution exceeds the entireTCO of the average tape based solution.‖ “…disk consumes 238 times asmuch energy as tape under assumptions that lean toward favoring disk.‖ -Clipper Group, (2010, 12-year cost comparison to average disk solution)In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution – Tape Delivers Significant TCOOver Disk

Scalability - Exascale Storage• Up to 400,000 slots in alibrary complex• Up to 8 Libraries / 16 Robots• 40 Frames per libraryT-Finity libraryarchitecturesupports multilibrarycomplex.Skyway Pass-Throughconnecting libraries incomplex.

Tape Technologies Are Reliable…Reliability has increased 700% over the technologyavailable a decade earlier• Advances in the coating of tape film• Read-after-write data verification• Error correction codes• Drive technology featuressimplified tape paths and servotracking systems• Spectra tape libraries offer dataintegrity verificationBeech, Debbie. “Best Practices for backup and long-term data retention” SylvaticaWhitepaper. The evolving role of disk and tape in the data center. June 200915

Reliability- Orders of Magnitude Greater• Tape has the best bit harderror rate of any storagemedium

What is Tape Debris?• “Green” tapes have debris• Debris is typically the result of the manufacturingprocess– Oxide shedding– Fractured base film (mylar)– Slitting debrisEnlarged area of tape section.The large circular contamination isabout 25 μm in diameter, roughlytwice the width of an LTO4 track.

Known Problems Caused by Tape Debris• New tapes are abrasive to the tape drive head surfaceand can cause excessive wear and reduce the lifespan• Debris contamination is a common cause ofperformance problems:– Poor signal performance can cause temporary dataerrors leading to read/write retries *– Debris can migrate into data bands, obstructing reading and writingof data causing retries or permanent data loss *– Debris accumulation can cause tape to wind unevenly on the spoolleading to tension control problems that cause temporary errors andretries, or may even cause tape to break*Source: IBM LTO Media: Optimized for IBM Drives and Automation. The difference is performance

CarbideClean the Spectra Solution• Tape burnishing removes loose and embeddedparticles and smoothes asperities in the tape• Improves the performance level and prolongs thelife of tape head (verifies the tape surface)

Complete Media Lifecycle Management

Terapack Optimised RAIT– Very fast tape mounts of RAIT sets (up to over 2x thespeed of non-RAIT sets or non-Terapack libraries– Protection against damaged, dropped or worn media– Streaming rate = to number of data tapes in a RAITset (up to 8x a non-RAIT stream speed)– Available in November from HPSS and Spectra

High Availability Architecture• Dual Active-Active Robotic Transporters• Dual Robotics Interface Modules (RIM)• Dual Robotics Control Module(RCM) Architecture• Global Spare TM tape drive• Redundant Power Paths• Data Integrity Verification– PreScan– QuickScan– PostScan

Cost• Tape‟s purchase cost remains unbeatable forlarge systems– 10 to 15 times less expensive to purchase than disk.• A 2.7PB tape system will have a cost of around $0.05 to$0.10 per GB. Larger systems are even lower.• IT grade disk costs about $1.00 GB street price; more forenterprise class diskAcquisition Cost

Sample HPC Customer list• Argonne National Labs• FMI- Switzerland• Honeywell• NASA Ames• NASA Goddard• Fermi National Labs• Sandia National Labs• Los Alamos National Labs• Honda Research• Colsa• NCSA• Howard Hughes Medical Center Research• CERN

30 Years of Success• Proven Innovator and History of Success– Founded in 1979, self-funded, profitable, debt-freegrowth– Intelligent integration of complete data protectionsolutions– Highest customer satisfaction & support ratings in theindustry• Gold Standard Manufacturer in Tape Innovation• Manufacturing in Boulder, Colorado

Worldwide Markets• Leader in data intensiveverticals:– HPC, M&E, Federal andFinancial– Require true enterprise solutions• Enterprise R&D flows over tomid-marketand department level productsEducation9%Financial14%Other12%Media andEntertainment25%HighPerformanceComputing17%Federal23%

Awards and Recognition• Ranked #1 in 14 out of 14categories!– Overall Product Ranking– Initial Product Quality– Product Reliability– Product Features– Technical Support– Sales-Force Competence– I Would Buy This Product Again• Ranked #1 in all 7 categoriesfor Mid-Level and Enterprise!

Thank You28