What’s so great about LTFS?
Unless you’ve been hiding out in your data center for the past two years, you’ve probably heard of Linear Tape File Systems, or LTFS, making an entrance into the data storage industry. Storage professionals who were once frustrated by the difficulties of tape management are now turning to tape for their long-term storage needs without complaint. Why is that?
What is so great about LTFS?
LTFS is vendor neutral. That’s right. Until IBM developed and announced LTFS in 2010 at the annual NAB trade show, data stored on tape was subject to modification by proprietary software, making the tape unreadable by other vendor’s applications or devices. This presents a problem when a vendor goes out of business or discontinues a specific product, application, or software offering. With LTFS, data can be accessed by any LTFS enabled drive. The open-standard of LTFS ensures that no vendor-specific applications or software are needed to access a file.
LTFS enables data partitioning. LTO-5 tape was released with the ability to partition the media for quicker access to stored data. Partition 0 holds the metadata for each file, like an index, while partition 1 holds the actual data. This means that an administrator can see and interact with all files on a tape without having to load and read the length of the media. This indexing makes it easier to manage data stored on tape.
LTFS is an open source file system software and can be downloaded at no charge. Administrators can easily implement LTFS in their environments by downloading the software to the host machine. By visiting your LTO-5 tape vendor’s website, you should be able to easily find the LTFS download information.
LTFS is ideal for long-term data archival. Without proprietary lock-down, the readability of tape is ensured far into the future. And with very good bit-error rates, LTO-5 media delivers reliability that cannot be matched in a disk alternative. We haven’t even looked into the cost-savings benefits. The StrongBox from Crossroads Systems is an archive appliance that leverages LTFS to enable cost-effective, long-term data storage. Read more about StrongBox at www.crossroads.com.
LTFS Bridges the Gap Between Off and Online Archives
Linear Tape File System (LTFS) technology was developed by IBM as the open-source formatting for writing data to LTO-5 tape. The LTFS software is free to download from any major tape vendor. The value in LTFS comes from the fact that LTFS does not make any changes to tape data, ensuring that data stored on tape is readable from any machine (with LTFS software enabled). This means that datacenters that rely on tape as a storage solution can now be confident in the knowledge that their data is not at risk of proprietary lock-down.
LTFS enables tape to become a file-like system for facilitated management. A new archive product, StrongBox, uses LTFS to transform tape into an always online file system. StrongBox was uniquely developed to take advantage of the open-standard, indexable format of LTO-5 media. The StrongBox connects to an external tape library for volume storage and employs an internal disk cache for rapid file retrieval, functioning like network-attached storage. The LTFS NAS data vault brings data stored on tape into an online reservoir that is accessible from a web-based interface. This eliminates geographical challenges as data can be accessed from any network-attached client, at any time.
Essentially, LTFS brings tape data online in a revolutionary way. IT administrators can free up valuable time by having the ability to access files from a single file-based location. With tape’s 60th anniversary this year, advances with LTFS are certain to propel tape’s popularity in the storage and archive markets.
Crossroads StrongBox is designed to address the need for a low cost and highly reliable LTFS, presenting itself as traditional network-attached storage-NAS while leveraging the new Active Archive.
Processing your request, Please wait....
