Big data offers vast opportunities for business insight, but you need the right technology to help you manage and use that data. IBM scale storage solutions can help you harness the power of big data while reducing costs and enabling a secure environment.
Diamondback answers those business needs by incorporating the latest generation of industry leading LTO, IBM enterprise class technology, and open compute project designs that help organizations handle the growing data demands of modern tape use cases like AI, big data, cloud, media and entertainment, active file archiving and, of course, deep data archiving.
The next-generation IBM Diamondback Tape Library is designed to help midsized and large enterprises meet cloud storage challenges, including data volume growth, rising storage footprint costs, data migration efforts and the increased complexity of IT training and management as staff resources shrink.
TS6000 delivers the density that today’s data growth requires—along with the efficiency and manageability to grow with business needs while improving the supportability of data infrastructure. You can achieve both a low per-terabyte cost and high density, with up to 27.9 PB of native data in a single 8 square-foot library using LTO Ultrium 9 cartridges.
Diamondback provides advanced capabilities for integrated tape drive and media management, delivered within a singlepane-of-glass management console. The Diamondback graphical user interface (GUI) is based on the unified interface used in other leading IBM storage solutions. It includes key features to help guide storage administrators in completing critical tasks. The Diamondback also supports management via REST API commands over SCSI.
IBM Diamondback with features such as automatic data-path failover, tape-drive encryption, dual robotic accessor grippers and WORM media support improve management and help to reduce risk in operations.
In addition, IBM Diamondback supports standardized reporting, reporting via the server interface as a “3584”. Independent software vendor administrators can integrate Diamondback without automation recognition modifications to existing software. This standardized reporting reduces the time and cost of infrastructure modernization projects.
Automates solutions for cloud environments
Diamondback is a tape drive integration leader, with features including a persistent worldwide name, multipath architecture, drive/media exception reporting, remote drive/media management and host-based path failover. Diamondback frames support LTO Ultrium 9 tape drives. Diamondback models help boost efficiency with improved serviceability, hot-swappable drive packaging, tool-less design, and captured fasteners. All libraries utilize Ultra-density (UD) slot technology that greatly increase a single library frame’s total capacity.
Diamondback frame models deploy as OCP influenced rack designs, enabling reduced floor space per library frame. A customer serviceable, high-performance robot with dual-grippers increase mount performance and overall system reliability and availability. Robots are serviced from the front of the library, eliminating the need for dedicated service bay frames and side access to the library. A top-rack offering can also provide optional 5U of rack space on top of the library for Fibre Channel switches, tape data movers or IBM Spectrum Archive nodes.
Introducing Open Recommended Access Order (oRAO) to LTO 9 technology
A key challenge when proposing an infrastructure based on tape technology is to battle the disk drive performance. While accessing disk files seems instant from a user’s point of view, access time to tape files is significantly higher, up to several minutes for a series of files. If large volumes are being accessed, this issue can become a serious performance bottleneck and optimizations are required in order to balance the numbers.
The new LTO 9 tape drive installed on the Diamondback library is designed to optimize tape performance with the introduction of Open Recommended Access Order (oRAO). The new IBM LTO 9 Tape full height drives obtain up to 73% faster data retrieval access to your LTO Ultrium 9 tape cartridges while reducing wasted movement of the tape media and tape robotics, reduction of tape drive and media wear without an extra cost to the existing library.
Delivers capacity on demand
The Diamondback library frame provides a more flexible upgrade path for users who want to expand their tape storage as their needs grow. Capacity on demand configurations for Diamondback models include a half capacity configuration and a full capacity configuration.
Optimized serviceability reduces time to repair
IBM Diamondback supports the latest innovations in serviceability enhancements. All service actions are performed from the front or back of the frame, enabling the frames to be placed next to each other without side service clearance. The tool-less design of components in the library reduces most service actions to less than 2 minutes in duration, while the captured screw design reduces the likelihood of fasteners being lost during service. The improved serviceability reduces the resources required to support tape infrastructure in the data center, optimizing the storage resource time to focus on data availability without specialized training.
Diamondback is also available with full IBM service through the IBM Service Expert Care Basic and IBM Service Expert Care Premium services. IBM Service Expert Care is recommended to provide optimal system availability and reduce down-time of drives and libraries.
Advanced features
Diamondback is designed with advanced features to deliver optimized time to data, reduced time to deploy and ease of serviceability. For example, the Advanced Library Management System (ALMS) feature supports dynamic storage management, enabling you to create and change logical libraries and configure any drive into any logical library. Diamondback offers pre-installed media shipment reducing time to deploy a fully loaded library frame to under 30 minutes from the time the system enters the data center. Diamondback also offers data-path failover to help improve business continuity and disaster recovery, and policy-based automatic media verification can help minimize data risk.
Centralized tape management
IBM offers a wide range of management software options for Diamondback. The management software options include:
Cyber resilient technology with physical air gap
The term “air gap” refers to physical or virtual isolation of systems or networks to avoid widespread corruption of data due to malware infection, system failures, or human error. The basic concept around an air gap is to bring secondary storage systems online periodically to incorporate the latest changes and then take them back offline. The “offline by design” nature of tape and enhanced Safeguarded tape process offers a true physical air gap and provides one of the most secure protections to confront cybercrime.
| IBM Diamondback Highlights | |
|---|---|
| Store up to 69.7 PB with 2.5:1 compression per library with IBM LTO-9 cartridges | |
| Strengthen security and compliance with encryption and WORM media | |
| Simplify user access to data stored on tape via IBM Spectrum Archive | |
| Provide a flexible expansion path to meet storage growth needs | |
| Reduce storage footprint and simplify cabling with 5U top rack space | |
| Optimize connectivity with FC, and SAS interface attachments | |
| Cyber resilient technology with physical air gap | |
