News

posted on 09 April 2008 10:39

The trouble with tapes is that a small minority produce backup and restore errors - generally when you absolutely do not want to experience them. Spectra Logic has added tape media health check software to its T-Series libraries.

Media Lifecycle Management (MLM) is a combination of LTO media and Spectra BlueScale software that provides media tracking and reporting for the life of a tape. Users can track more than 30 pieces of information about individual tape media.  Items such as: born-on date; number of reads and writes; error rate; media quality; date of last access; application usage; encryption information; cleaning log; and remaining capacity, are all tracked.

MLM information is linked to the cartridge barcode but also permanently stored on the medium auxiliary memory chip (MAM) of the LTO tape, and remains accessible even if the barcode is compromised. Library administrators are proactively notified to remove tapes with high error rates to counter the risk of data corruption.

Matt Starr, Spectra Logic's CTO, said: "MLM changes the playing field for secondary storage, as it makes tape as reliable as disk."

Up until now only TapeWise has offered a commercially-available product to provide tape health checks. It is the only option for non-LTO tape users.

MLM will be offered free of charge to all T-series library users, and will begin shipping in April 2008 as a part of the Spectra BlueScale 10.2 software release.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}