Sony and Fujifilm Pass LTO Ultrium Generation 9 Format Interchange Compliance Testing

By AIT News Desk On Sep 7, 2021

Leading Tape Manufacturers to Support LTO-9 Technology and the Ultrium Format Capacity, Performance and Feature Enhancements

The Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program Technology Provider Companies (TPCs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM Corporation and Quantum LTO Holdings, LLC, announced that Fujifilm Corporation and Sony Corporation have completed interchange testing and achieved LTO Ultrium generation 9 format compliance. The successful completion of this testing now permits these companies to use the LTO Ultrium generation 9 format trademarks on LTO technology products.

“Storage best practices call for having a copy of data offline to ensure that infected files aren’t able to corrupt the system”

“LTO technology continues to pave the way for data protection and business continuity protecting against the growing threat of ransomware,” said Sam Werner, VP, Storage Product Management at IBM. “Building on more than two decades of data protection and storage innovation, LTO-9 offers end users more energy-efficient storage capacity than previous generations. It delivers a powerful, scalable and adaptable open-tape storage format that can provide industries around the globe secured and protected data against storage cyber threats.”

These qualities are even more important as ransomware attacks have increased by 15 percent per year. The total cost of these attacks could exceed USD 6 trillion in 2021 alone.¹ LTO tape products are designed to allow for an easy backup and fast recovery of data that can then be taken offline and physically unavailable from virus and other malicious attacks that can affect business operations and increase risk for loss of data.

“Storage best practices call for having a copy of data offline to ensure that infected files aren’t able to corrupt the system,” said Christophe Bertrand, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “LTO products have an important role in data protection and are a critical component in ensuring that your system can be restored in the event of an attack.”

The LTO Program enhances quality and confidence for data storage managers by ensuring that all licensees pass a series of verification tests involving rigorous data interchangeability requirements prior to licensure for use of the LTO Ultrium trademarks. Additionally, annual tests of LTO technology products are performed by the TPCs to confirm that all manufacturers adhere to the Ultrium format specifications. This means that buyers of tape drives and data cartridges, that include the LTO Ultrium format trademark logo, know that these products are Ultrium format-compliant when reviewing backup and archiving solutions.

Announced in Sept. 2020, LTO-9 specifications are designed to support increased tape cartridge storage capacity of up to 45TB² when compressed. LTO-9 drives will provide full backward read and write compatibility with LTO-8 cartridges, as well as many previously introduced features, including multi-layer security support via hardware-based encryption, WORM (Write-Once, Read-Many) functionality and support for Linear Tape File System (LTFS).

How to License LTO Ultrium Technology

The LTO Program offers several different license packages – from enhanced packages that provide the specifications and licenses to manufacture LTO Ultrium products, to basic packages providing LTO format specifications.

Buyers seeking LTO Ultrium format-compliant products should look for the LTO Ultrium format verification trademarks on both tape drives and data cartridges. Storage and media manufacturers interested in licensing LTO formats may obtain information by contacting the LTO Program.