The DLT-S4 Is Born. Death Of LTO3 Loom?
The DLT-S4 Is Born. Death Of LTO3 Loom?
March 8th, 2006: With the move of a letter, the addition of a number and the crash of a price, Quantum's SDLT is renamed as the DLTS-4 and brings 1.6Gb of data retention for less than 10c per megabyte.
Quantum - which is placing itself firmly as the 'data protection' vendor of choice in ANZ - views its two major tape offerings: LTO and DLT as existing in different server areas. The former is aimed at Unix/Linux servers that offer greater speed of access. The latter is 'dumbed down' for Windows boxes that present bottlenecks to data access.
'Dumbed down' for Windows, however, also offers massive benefits to Quantum in terms of sheer numbers of users, and does not define the new tape drives as less utilitarian.
Offering 1.6Gb of compressed (twice the capacity of LTO3) data storage at the same price media as LTO3, DLT-S4 is aimed at the mid-range organisation. These sub-1,000-seat organisations tend to operate from the more sluggish Windows platform, and have seen their data archiving and back-up requirements escalate radically in the last few years.
Offering 1.6Gb of compressed (twice the capacity of LTO3) data storage at the same price media as LTO3, DLT-S4 is aimed at the mid-range organisation. These sub-1,000-seat organisations tend to operate from the more sluggish Windows platform, and have seen their data archiving and back-up requirements escalate radically in the last few years.
But Quantum's main focus for the consumer appears to be leading on price and choice. As it points out:
'A customer with a $AUD17,000 budget that previously would have been able to purchase a 25 TB, 4U tape automation solution from a competing vendor will be able to purchase a 51 TB tape automation solution with DLT-S4 from Quantum for the same price and form factor. Alternatively, if the customer only wants a 25 TB solution, he/she will be able to get this in a 2U form factor for just $AUD9,000 - thus meeting the capacity requirement in half the rack space and for half the cost.'
This focus would appear to be the next shot fired in the storage war, which has recently been fought on two fronts: the 'death of tape' and the rise of tape virtualisation; with the constant battle of cost-per-megabyte as the hand-to-hand combat.
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