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Tape Council Finds Tape Most Cost-Effective Storage Solution

Tape Technology Council, a non-profit trade association comprised of leading data-storage technology manufacturers, announced its findings on the factors that contribute to the total cost of ownership (TCO) of data storage solutions. Presented by Tape Council president Rich Harada at Storage Networking World, the findings suggest that IT managers may overlook important criteria when making purchasing decisions for their data protection systems.

"Many storage-system purchasers focus their attention on up-front costs such as hardware and media costs, installation, controllers and application software to arrive at a comparative cost-per-gigabyte," said Harada. "Although this cost is a good starting point for any system comparison, it's certainly not the full picture. By examining other factors that can play a role in the long term, the true advantages of one system over another become clear."

According to Harada, some of the commonly overlooked costs include:

• Power and cooling.

• Floor space.

• Security.

• Scalability.

• Reliability.

• Personnel training.

The Tape Council study sought to compare TCO for three of the most popular data storage choices: tape, optical disc and magnetic disk technologies. Ultimately, the research showed the tape solution to have the lowest initial cost as well as the best overall value of the three solutions -- coming in at approximately one-fourth the total cost of Mirrored RAID. The study revealed the following total costs over a three-year period:

• Tape Library -- $102,394.

• Optical Disc Jukebox -- $150,688.

• Mirrored RAID -- $416,085.

The study looked at costs for hardware, software/controllers, media, hardware/software maintenance, floor space and power consumption. The Tape Council solicited bids from independent integrators and utilized the three lowest bids for each system type. Storage parameters were identical for each and included a WORM storage application with a capacity requirement of 10TB of archived data; daily incremental storage of 10GB; and a storage time frame of three years.

Harada concluded that long-term operational costs need to be included as part of the purchase decision as well as system costs, growth requirements and timeframe for operation. "Don't be fooled by so-called 'data throughput' comparisons such as small file transfers vs. restore of large data sets," he added. "Bear in mind also that magnetic disk may be right for certain applications even at a higher cost but even so, it isn't a complete data protection solution. It still should be backed up with tape."

Now in its third year, the Tape Technology Council has emerged as the primary industry resource for promoting, integrating and using tape-based storage devices and media. A non-profit organization, the Tape Council's membership is comprised of leading tape vendors including Fujifilm, IBM, Imation, Maxell, Quantum, Sony, StorageTek and TDK.