This is probably the cheapest way to store 1000 TB of data securely online: Tape giant rents out 18 TB LTO-9 tapes and undercuts Wasabi and BackBlaze cloud storage by 75%
Fujifilm recently announced that it will be raising prices on its various tape products, attributing the surprise move to rising raw material costs.
The company emphasized at the time that “data tape remains the most cost-effective and energy-efficient storage solution available,” but that’s clearly not as true as it once was, with increases of 15% for the Ultrium 9 data cartridges and as many as 40 % for older generation products.
Data storage and management company Spectra Logic, in partnership with cloud archive provider Geyser Data, has launched a new tape-as-service (TaaS) cloud offering that combines the benefits of traditional tape storage, such as high durability and low cost, with the convenience and flexibility of cloud services.
Better performance and lower costs
Tape Archive Platform As-a-Service (TAPAS) leverages the Spectra Cube cloud-optimized tape library, Spectra Certified LTO-9 media, and Spectra BlackPearl S3-compatible object storage to create an object-based tape infrastructure compatible with any Amazon S3 or S3 Glacier application.
The two companies describe TAPAS as the “first true tape-as-a-service offering in the cloud.” While tape-as-a-service is far from a new concept, it had a very different meaning in the past.
A spokesperson for Spectra Logic explained: “For example, FujiFilm offered on-premises server software that provided an S3 interface to tape. They did not provide the server or the tape library. The customer had to supply these, do the integration themselves and buy the tapes from FujiFilm. This was not a consumption-based cloud service as we know it today.”
The TAPAS platform aims to offer fast and free data retrieval ranging from seconds to minutes, along with the ability to copy all data to large clouds for wide deployment. Data security is achieved through the use of special tapes and data segregation to minimize cyber threats and unauthorized access. TAPAS also offers data residency, with user-defined physical locations to avoid unforeseen issues related to public cloud storage.
“With the increasing volume of backup and archive data being stored in the cloud, there is a clear need for greater security, better performance and lower costs,” said Nathan Thompson, CEO of Spectra Logic. “Our partnership with Geyser Data is at the forefront of delivering the traditional benefits of tape in a modern, easy-to-use service that is more cost-effective than typical cloud cold storage services.”
TAPAS pricing is per tape and is approximately $27 per month for each 18 terabyte LTO-9 tape cartridge used, or approximately $1.50/TB. That’s significantly cheaper than Backblaze ($6/TB per month) and Wasabi ($6.99/TB per month). TAPAS will be available starting June 1, along with a 30-day trial period with limited capacity. Find out more here.