HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives

Transcription

1 Product Analysis HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives Abstract: HP was the first of the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) vendors to introduce and launch a second-generation LTO Ultrium tape drive. Its Ultrium 460 tape drive shows HP's desire to remain a competitor in the midrange tape market. By Fara Yale Strategic Planning Assumptions HP's introduction of a second-generation LTO tape drive indicates that HP is committed to ongoing internal development of tape technology and intends to remain an active participant in the LTO Program (0.9 probability). Publication Date:25 February 2003

2 2 HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives LTO Technology Advances to the Next Level The HP Ultrium 460 Tape Drive The first generation LTO Ultrium drives began shipping in late 2000 with native capacities of 100GB and with native data transfer rates of 15 MB/sec (IBM and HP) or 16 MB/sec (Seagate.) With the entry of those first-generation LTO drives, a category of products commonly referred to as superdrives was created, and the stage was set in the midrange tape market for a contest centered around time-to-market, capacity and performance. The primary technology contenders in the superdrive category are LTO, Quantum's Super DLTtape (SDLT), and Sony's Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) and SAIT. At the high end of the midrange market, IBM's Magstar 3590 drives and StorageTek's T9840 and T9940 could also be considered superdrive contenders, but because of their significantly higher prices, these drives typically compete for a smaller portion of the total midrange space. Although there is no industry consensus on the exact definition of a superdrive, it is generally viewed as having a capacity of at least 100GB, and the IBM Magstar 3590 and StorageTek 9840 do not reach that level. Competition for time-to-market with a next-generation, higher-capacity, higher-performance drive is not limited to rivalry among the different technologies. The three LTO vendors, HP, IBM and Seagate, also vie among themselves to be the first to bring the next-generation drive to market. With an August 2000 general availability (GA) date, IBM took the lead in market delivery for the firstgeneration LTO drives, followed within months by HP and Seagate. With the Generation 2 LTO Ultrium drives, HP has reaffirmed its commitment to LTO technology by being first to market with a Generation 2 LTO Ultrium drive. On 7 October 2002, HP announced it was shipping qualification units of its second-generation StorageWorks LTO Ultrium tape drive to six of its key original equipment manufacturer (OEM) system and library partners. On 19 November, the company formally announced the drive and stated that it was commercially available. HP's second-generation LTO tape drive is sold to the company's reseller and end-user customer base as the HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 tape drive. As with its first-generation LTO Ultrium product, HP is also actively engaged in selling this new drive to other server OEMs and to tape automation vendors for integration into tape autoloaders or libraries. As specified in the LTO Ultrium specification for the Generation 2 Ultrium drives, the native capacity of the HP Ultrium 460 drive is 200GB. It has a native data transfer rate of 30 MB/sec and, of course, the capacity and transfer rate can be doubled with data compression. The data compression method, as defined in the Ultrium format, is LTO-DC, which is an enhancement of Adaptive Lossless Data Compression (ALDC). HP's implementation (on its first- and second-generation LTO drives) of the LTO-DC dual-mode compression algorithms is designed to limit the expansion of data through an intelligent analysis of the data. If data cannot be successfully compressed (such as video, seismic or previously

3 compressed data), compression is automatically switched off, and once the data become compressible again, it switches back on. HP states that its implementation enables the average expansion of previously compressed data, or otherwise uncompressible data, to be reduced to less than 0.05 percent compared to 12.5 percent with ALDC. On the second-generation LTO Ultrium drives, data are recorded on 512 data tracks, an increase of 33 percent from the 384 tracks of the firstgeneration drives. The data tracks for the Ultrium 2 format are laid out on the tape in four data bands, the same as specified in the Ultrium 1 format. With the Ultrium 1 drives, there were 96 tracks in a data band, and there are 128 tracks per data band with Ultrium 2. There are five pre-recorded servo bands, and they are identical to those used in the Ultrium 1 format. Because of the increased linear density, the data encoding method for LTO Ultrium 2 drives has been changed to Run Length Limited (RLL) 0,11/13. LTO Ultrium 2 drives will still use a RLL 1,7 code when writing to Ultrium 1 tapes. The read channel is Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML) technology, instead of the peak detect method that is used on HP's Generation 1 LTO drive. HP's first-generation LTO drive has a Data Rate Matching (DRM) feature, which enables dynamic, continuous, variable speed operation with speeds ranging from 6 MB/sec to 15 MB/sec. The DRM feature enables the drive to maintain streaming during a write or read operation and minimizes the number of tape repositions or shoeshining by the tape mechanism. This is accomplished through intelligent management of the movement of data into and out of the data buffer to ensure the host speed is always in synch with the drive. HP has also implemented DRM on its second-generation LTO drive and the range of the tape speed operation has been extended. The DRM range for the Ultrium 460 drive is 10 MB/sec to 30 MB/sec for Ultrium 2 tapes and it is 6.6 MB/sec to 20 MB/sec for Ultrium 1 format tapes when used in the Ultrium 460 drive. In addition, the cache size has been increased to 64MB (from 16MB on HP's first-generation LTO drive.) The media used with the Generation 2 LTO drives are a more advanced Metal Particle formulation and this new media is required to achieve the 200GB capacity and much higher transfer rates of the second-generation LTO products. Although new media is required for the Generation 2 LTO drives, the HP Ultrium 460 can read and write to the Generation 1 Ultrium media. The HP Ultrium 460 drive determines whether to operate in Ultrium 1 or Ultrium 2 mode from the cartridge memory and the drive makes the appropriate changes to the servo electronics to produce the correct track pitch, number of tracks and linear bit density. If the Generation 1 media is used, the recording capacity is still 100GB (native capacity), but the drive will read and write to the Generation 1 media at a data rate of 20 MB/sec providing a 33 percent increase in performance. The media remains 609m in length and the Generation 2 Ultrium cartridges are identical in size and shape to the Generation 1 cartridges. However, Ultrium 2 cartridges will use a cartridge with a different color package to make it easier for the user to distinguish between the two cartridges the HP-branded Ultrium 2 cartridge is red. The HP Universal 3

4 4 HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives cleaning cartridge is now used for both generations of its Ultrium tape drives. For ease of identification, its packaging is bright orange. No regular cleaning is required, and cleaning is required only on request from the tape drive. HP has stated that its Ultrium drives fully support all media displaying the Ultrium 1 or Ultrium 2 compliance marks. However, the company recommends the use of HP-branded media on the basis of its own qualification process that scrutinizes areas of performance not covered by standard logo tests. For the Ultrium 460 drive, HP made only minor changes to the magnetoresistive (MR) head design used on its Ultrium 1 product in order to handle the higher frequencies inherent in the higher linear densities of the Ultrium 2 format. The heads used on the Ultrium 460 are capable of writing and reading Ultrium 1 format tapes, and a second head stack is not necessary for backward compatibility. Key specifications for the HP Ultrium 460 are shown in Table 1. In addition to doubling the capacity and data transfer rate on the HP Generation 2 LTO drive over its first-generation LTO products, other key enhancements or differences in specifications, not mentioned previously, between the two HP Ultrium product generations include: New electronics module HP's Ultrium 460 drive has a completely new electronics module, which is designed to meet the new Ultrium 2 format requirements and to further improve performance and reliability. Included are new ASICs for the interface, pre-amplifiers and formatter sections. The same microprocessor was retained for overall control, but a key difference from HP Ultrium 230 drives is that the HP Ultrium 460 has a separate microprocessor, which controls the interface electronics. Changes to mechanics Although based on its Ultrium 230 mechanism, HP has made several modifications for the Ultrium 460 tape mechanism. Changes were made to the tape path, including a new zirconium nitride coating on the roller guides and a new take-up spool with a reversed tape direction. These changes were made to reduce tape wander at the higher Ultrium 2 tape speeds and produce a better tape pack. This new tape path was also previously integrated into HP's firstgeneration Ultrium drives. A new cartridge presence sensor was added in the Ultrium 460, which removes the need for the picker mechanism in an autoloader or library to push or load the cartridge into the drive. With the new sensor, an instruction to load the cartridge can be sent to the drive via the Automation Control Interface (ACI). Front panels for the stand-alone drive and the automation drive were redesigned to make it easier for customization of the drive for customers, such as OEMs, and the new design also eliminated the need for one of the ribbon cables. Air vents were redesigned to provide better cooling for the drive electronics, while keeping the airflow away from the drive mechanism.

5 5 Table 1 HP's LTO Ultrium 460 Tape Drive Specifications Feature Specification Capacity (GB) Native 200 Compressed (1) 400 Data Transfer Rate (MB/sec) Native 30 Compressed (1) 60 Tape Format Recording Method Linear serpentine, 8 channel recording Recording Format Ultrium Generation 2, Ultrium Generation 1 Tape Speed (Meters per Second, m/sec) Read/Write 5.45 Search Rewind 7.25 Rewind Time (Seconds) 84 (Ultrium 2 tape) Cache (MB) 64 Cartridge Load/Unload Time (Seconds to/from Beginning of Tape) 19 (Ultrium 2 tape) Average File Access Time (Seconds From Beginning of Tape) 52 (Ultrium 1 and Ultrium 2 tapes) Media Type/Length (Meters) Metal Particle, 609m LTO Cartridge Memory 4KB Reliability Media Uses (Number of passes) 1,000,000 Media Life (Years) 30 Head Life (Hours) 60,000 Mean Time Between Failure (Hours/Duty Cycle) 250,000 power on hours at 100 percent Error Detection/Correction Reed Solomon Hard Error Rate 1 in bits Interfaces/Availability Ultra-3 SCSI, LVD/November Gb/sec Fibre Channel native/cyq Power Consumption (Watts) (Internal Drive) Idle (With Tape Loaded) 14.2 Operating Average (Writing) 23.7 Operating Peak 23.7 Form Factor (Internal Drive) 5.25-inch Full Height Dimensions (H x W x D): mm (Inches) 82.5 x 146 x 203 (3.25 x 5.75 x 8) Weight (kg/lbs) (Internal Product) 2.1/4.6 Product Announcement Date 19 November 2002 General Availability Date 19 November 2002 Note: (1) Assumes 2:1 compression ratio Source: Gartner Dataquest and Hewlett-Packard Interface The Ultrium 460 drive has an Ultra-3 LVD SCSI interface (also known as Ultra 160 SCSI). HP's first-generation LTO drive has a wide Ultra-2 LVD SCSI interface. HP's first-generation LTO drive did not have a Fibre Channel (FC) interface; the HP Ultrium 460 will be offered with a native 2 Gb/sec FC interface. Although not available at the time of initial shipment, HP expects to release the FC version of the drive to library manufacturers in March 2003 so they can begin the integration of the drive into their automation products. HP has no plans

6 6 HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives for a stand-alone FC drive. An RS422 serial interface is also provided for automation control, which enables tape libraries and autoloaders to send and receive information to and from the tape drive independent of the SCSI interface. File access time On its second-generation LTO drive, HP has improved the time to access a specific file on a tape to a total of 71 seconds, down from 91 seconds on its first-generation drive. In a search operation, the average file access time from the beginning of tape has been lowered from 71 seconds to 52 seconds (from the beginning of tape) and the cartridge load-to-ready time has also been reduced from 25 seconds to 19 seconds. Tape speed An increase in the tape speed on the HP Ultrium 460 is a major contributor to the increased transfer rate and to the improved file access time on this new drive. The speed of tape movement during a read/write operation is 5.45 m/sec compared with 4.1 m/sec on HP's first generation LTO drive. On HP's Generation 1 LTO drive, the search speed and rewind speed were both 4.1 m/sec. These have been improved to a search speed of between 5.5 and 7.25 m/sec and a rewind speed of 7.25 m/sec on the Generation 2 drive. Power requirements The power required for the HP Ultrium 460 has increased slightly over that required for its first-generation Ultrium 230 drive. Power, while idle with no tape inserted, has increased from 10.9 watts to 11.8 watts. The power required while idle, with a tape inserted, increased from 12.8 watts to 14.2 watts and the peak power required (which equates to the power required during a write operation) has increased to 23.7 watts on the HP Ultrium 460 drive from 22.5 watts on the HP Ultrium 230 drive. (These power specifications are for the internal version of the drive.) HP's list prices for the Ultrium 460 drive and data cartridge are shown in Table 2. Table 2 also reflects the list prices for HP's Ultrium 230 drive, the full high version of its first-generation LTO drive, and for the HP-branded Ultrium 1 cartridge. Table 2 HP Ultrium 460 and Ultrium 230 List Prices Model List Price HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 Internal (Q1508A) $7,399 HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 External (Q1509A) $7,699 HP StorageWorks Ultrium 460 Array Module (1) (Q1512A) $8,139 HP StorageWorks Ultrium 400GB Data Cartridge (C7972A) $ HP Ultrium 230i Internal Tape Drive (C7400A) $5,525 HP Ultrium 230e External Tape Drive (C7401B) $5,735 HP Ultrium 230m Array Module (1) (C7470A) $6,308 HP Ultrium 200GB Data Cartridge (C7971A) $96.98 (1) An Array Module is a version of the drive that allows it to fit into HP's Tape Array 5300 product. The 5300 is a 3U-high rack enclosure that can hold a variety of full-height and half-height tape drives or DVD-ROM drives. Source: Hewlett-Packard (February 2003)

7 Gartner Dataquest expected list pricing on the second-generation LTO drives to be more in line with the current pricing of the first-generation products, with price reductions taking place on the first-generation drives. That has not proven to be the case with regard to HP's pricing even after normal discounting is applied. However, we believe that HP is attempting to capitalize on its time-to-market advantage for its Generation 2 LTO products. We further believe that pricing will begin coming down in the second quarter of 2003 and the decline will accelerate in the third quarter. This will be brought on partially by Quantum's aggressive pricing on the SDLT 320 drives as it attempts to take back share from LTO. But lower pricing will also be induced by competition among the three LTO vendors once all three have their Generation 2 LTO drives in general availability and once other server vendors that are not LTO drive suppliers begin offering the second-generation drives. 7 Gartner Dataquest Perspective HP has carried over to its second-generation LTO Ultrium drive all the key features that helped to make its first-generation drive successful in the market. In addition, technical changes were made to further enrich the overall reliability and performance of the drive, and some modifications were also made to enhance key specification areas of the secondgeneration Ultrium drive over those of the first-generation full-high product. The Data Rate Matching feature, low-power requirements and HP's implementation of the dual-mode algorithms of LTO data compression, which were attractive on the first-generation drive, have been extended to the second-generation product. HP has bettered the access time to data, which should help to dispel end-user concerns that access times might increase as the amount of data stored on a cartridge doubled. The cartridge load time was also reduced, contributing to the overall improvement in file access times, and also improving swap times in library applications. Key specifications in the area of drive reliability, such as head life and MTBF, have remained constant from one generation to the next. The buffer size on HP's Ultrium 230, its first-generation LTO drive, was considerably lower than on the first-generation drives from IBM and Seagate. By increasing the buffer to 64MB, HP will not have to defend itself on this specification item when comparisons among the Generation 2 LTO drives from all three LTO vendors are done. HP's original plans for its first LTO Ultrium drive included an FC interface, but HP later scrapped those plans, claiming it did not see a high demand from customers. Gartner Dataquest believes the availability of an FC interface on its second-generation drive will help its competitive position, most notably in libraries in SAN environments. HP took a "family approach" with its first-generation LTO drives by also offering a half-high drive with a lower data transfer rate. HP says its strategy still includes this family approach for the second-generation products, but it is not committing to an availability date for a lowerperformance half-high drive.

8 8 HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives IBM announced its second-generation LTO Ultrium drive on 28 January 2003, and Gartner Dataquest will provide more of a head-to-head comparison of these two drives in a future document. One area that will stand out when the HP Ultrium 460 is compared to IBM's LTO Ultrium 2 tape drive is the difference in the data transfer rates between these two Generation 2 LTO drives. The IBM LTO Ultrium 2 drive has a native data transfer rate of 35 MB/sec, and even though Seagate has not yet announced its second-generation LTO drive, Gartner Dataquest believes that the HP drive will have the lowest data rate of the second-generation offerings from the three LTO technology provider companies (TPCs). Gartner Dataquest does not believe that the lower data rate of the HP drive will make a significant difference in overall throughput rates in most "real-world" applications, because in the lion's share of environments, other bottlenecks exist that will prevent utilizing the maximum speed of the drive. There will, however, be situations where the customer's application is performance-oriented and the HP drive will be viewed as less suitable than the IBM or Seagate drives. It will also be a feature that will appear as a weakness for the HP drive when side-by-side comparisons of the Generation 2 LTO drives are made by its competitors and potential customers. Since HP began shipping its initial LTO Ultrium drives, the merger with Compaq has taken place, providing HP with a significantly larger captive customer base. And, because all indications are that HP is now leading with LTO over SDLT, this should logically provide a boost for HP's LTO drive shipments. This does not mean that HP has ceased to market and sell the Quantum DLT and SDLT products. HP is maintaining its strategy of selling customers what they want. However, SDLT is positioned for customers that have already standardized on SDLT, or that have an ongoing need for compatibility with DLT. LTO Ultrium, on the other hand, is positioned to be sold when maximum capacity and performance are required when the customer has a networked backup environment or automation, especially in a SAN environment; when a customer requires the benefits of an open standard and when a customer has a mixed systems environment. Although the increased captive base will be a boon for its LTO shipments, HP's ability to sell its LTO drives to other server OEMs could actually be hindered as a result of the merger with Compaq. This is because the new HP company is now viewed by potential server customers as an even larger competitor in the server marketplace. Therefore as other major server companies make their supplier decisions for the second-generation LTO drives, this could have a corresponding negative effect on HP's overall LTO shipments. Also, HP's expected availability for the Ultrium 460 drive in its ESL and MSL libraries is April 2003, and this will have an effect on the initial ramp of HP's secondgeneration LTO drives. Gartner Dataquest finds it rather ironic that even though HP was the first of the three LTO drive manufacturers to make its Ultrium 2 drives commercially available, competitors of HP in the server market as well as competing library manufacturers, will have LTO Generation 2-based automation products available earlier than HP.

9 Gartner Dataquest believes the significance of HP's introduction and launch of its LTO Ultrium 460 drive goes beyond the introduction of another tape drive product. Equally important is the message it conveys to customers and non-lto competitors. There has been much speculation over the past two years that HP's strategy would cease to include investing in the design and manufacture of tape drives and that HP would walk away from the LTO Program. Gartner Dataquest believes that the fact that HP was the first to market with a second-generation LTO drive demonstrates that HP is committed to this technology and that it intends to remain a full-fledged member of the LTO Program. Time-to-market is always a key factor in the highly competitive tape drive market, and being first-to-market with a next-generation drive has traditionally provided a vendor with a competitive advantage, because the drive that is first normally goes to the head of the line in the qualification cycles of library vendors and server OEMs. This was exemplified by the fact that StorageTek began limited availability shipments of the HP Ultrium 460 drive in its L180 and L700 libraries in December 2002 and followed with the announcement of general availability in January Clearly, the introduction and launch of the Generation 2 LTO Ultrium drives also make a statement for the LTO Program in general. It provides evidence that the LTO Program is intact and is delivering according to the LTO Ultrium roadmap that was laid out when the LTO technology was introduced in April With the shipment of its second SDLT tape drive, the SDLT 320 drive, in June 2002, Quantum's SDLT technology moved ahead of LTO in capacity (at 160GB native capacity) and moved up to par with LTO in its data transfer rate (at 16 MB/sec native data transfer rate.) With the market entry of the second-generation LTO products, LTO technology has now surpassed SDLT with a 40GB (native) capacity advantage and a data transfer rate that is about double that of the SDLT 320. The ball is now in Quantum's court to show that it can deliver its nextgeneration SDLT drive according to its latest roadmap. 9 Key Issue What changes in technologies and vendor dynamics will shape the storage industry?

10 10 HP Is First to Market With LTO Generation 2 Drives This document has been published to the following Marketplace codes: HARD-WW-DP-0427 For More Information... In North America and Latin America: In Europe, the Middle East and Africa: In Asia/Pacific: In Japan: Worldwide via gartner.com: Entire contents 2003 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice