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back to article Did Oracle just sign tape's death warrant? Depends what 'no comment' means

Oracle's StorageTek (StreamLine) tape library product range will be end-of-lifed, El Reg has learned. StreamLine boxes are high-end libraries, generally for enterprise use, competing with equivalents from IBM (buoyed by mainframe tape use) and SpectraLogic. Both IBM and Oracle have their own proprietary tape formats as well as …

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  1. leon clarke

    It's pining for the fijords

    There have been plenty of Oracle things (Java, Solaris) that are clearly dead, despite flat out denials. I'd say that 'no comment' is less positive than 'we're fully committed to X but we're re-jiging the roadmap a bit'. And we know that the latter really means it's dead but they don't dare tell anyone.

    3 3 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's pining for the fijords

      Could it be simply that Oracle already make LTO tape libraries, so why would they want to make proprietary ones any more?

      https://www.oracle.com/storage/tape-storage/sl150-modular-tape-library/index.html

      Still, would be good of them to admit it.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's pining for the fijords

        Them making their own proprietary drives is different than continuing to make jukeboxes/tape-libraries. If they see a market where they can make money, I assume they'll stay in it. And I think most of their jukeboxes allowed for either LTO, StorageTek, or even a mix in some cases.

        I don't have links, but I seem to recall seeing the following articles on The Register:

        o Photos of Sun tape libraries being used by Amazon. For Glacier?

        o A large science org in Europe using the StorageTek tape drives to save costs by reformatting the older media to take advantage of the better compression in the newer StorageTek tape drives.

        0 0 Reply
  2. FurtherDownSouth

    Obituary

    You can always *try* to pry that tape from my cold, dead fingers. When treated properly and *tested*, it has always worked wonders over the past years I've seen it in action. Offline means exactly that - offline, and where no ransomware will get to encrypting or wiping those backups, unlike some online disastrous cases I've seen.

    22 0 Reply
    1. seven of five
      Reply Icon

      Re: Obituary

      > You can always *try* to pry that tape from my cold, dead fingers.

      and even then someone will be able to restore. Tapes cost next to nothing, can sit in a vault for years, will be filled at impressive rates (as long as they can stream) and can stand a lot of physical damage.

      No one buys disks to store them cold and offline, no matter how much they beat that VTL drum.

      14 0 Reply
    2. Flakk
      Reply Icon

      Re: Obituary

      Yep. I was (among other duties) the backup administrator for fifteen years. With proper testing and storage, tape performance and reliability is excellent. For on-prem it is difficult to beat, especially if $/TB, RTO and privacy/data security are key drivers.

      6 0 Reply
    3. thomn8r
      Reply Icon

      Re: Obituary

      Remember: 3/2/1

      3 copies

      2 different media types

      1 offsite

      10 0 Reply
    4. Bryan Hall
      Reply Icon

      Re: Obituary

      Exactly - tape is the real, no power required, archive medium.

      I read some old tandberg QIC tapes from the early 90's a year ago - and they still worked fine.

      9 0 Reply
    5. Stevie
      Reply Icon

      Re: Obituary

      "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes barrelling down the freeway".

      Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 3rd Ed, 1996

      11 0 Reply
      1. Beachrider
        Reply Icon

        CTAM

        ... and old word for the 'Chevy Truck Access Method'. Rather Mainframe-ish for this audience, though.

        2 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kiss Larry's Ring..

    ..but it's probably the last thing you'll ever do. His hit rate for destroying HW companies is nearing 100%. Soon he'll be back to shaking down customers for SW and then suing them as a sole means of support.

    2 0 Reply
  4. xosevp

    T10000E ready to ship ???

    Roadmap(Sep 2015) says T10000E is ready to ship in 2017:

    http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/tape-storage/enterprise-tape-tech-roadmap-2365605.pdf

    "Focus Areas Moving Towards T10000E" (Feb 2016):

    http://hpc.csiro.au/users/dmfug/Meeting_Feb2016/Presentations/Oracle_Storagetek_Update.pdf

    2 0 Reply
  5. Dwarf

    Fundamental problem

    There's one fundamental problem with single instance snapshots in on-disk / VTL backups.

    Single instancing kicks in to reduce duplication to provide capacity, which in turn means that there is only one real copy of the data, so if anything happens to that one copy that is the same in the last 31 days worth of backups - then its gone forever. OK replication to another site helps, but then we have to consider undetected corruption that gets replicated nicely between the sites.

    Give me a robot stuffed with tapes and a smiling chap who turns up to cart off today's tapes to some remote lair. This is a far better insurance policy as there are so many more copies to recover from.

    Nothing wrong with a hybrid approach either - fast recovery when I need it, guaranteed recovery when something goes phutt on the highly resilient "never seen it fail like that before" platform.

    10 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fundamental problem

      The fundamental problem is not just technology - it's about how people get started in IT these days.

      People that grew up in the tape era usually went through different departments support, backup, infrastructure, database, applications etc. Throughout that career path you could develop an understanding of what works and what doesn't.

      Nowadays you enter IT by selling mobile phone cases and counterfait ink cartridges. Next you're called a senior systems engineer and talk about "inline dedupe".

      0 0 Reply
  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Pint

    I'm staggered

    There really are sysadmins who get that cheap hard drives (or "The Cloud") have serious drawbacks.

    I raise my glass and order a round for you all.

    4 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I'm staggered

      Sysadmins are never the problem !!!

      It is the PHB's who get taken in by the slick Sales people who will sell any old crap to get their commisions.

      Sales will argue Red is Blue if it gets the sale.

      The sysadmins are the people who are tasked with making it all work, in spite of their objections.

      After all the Sales people must be right as 'you' only make sure the company can actually work each day ....... nothing very important. :)

      [In defence of Sysadmins everywhere from your 'base callumny' !!!]

      3 0 Reply
  7. Alistair
    Windows

    Streamline 8500E

    4600 slots. 1200 free 61 active drives. 4 caps.

    And the three fellows that put it together and wired it up are running their own company. Don't need oracle no more. (They'll be at my midsummer BBQ with wives and children too).

    1 0 Reply
    1. MotherGoose
      Reply Icon

      Re: Streamline 8500E

      With 8 "robots" I assume......??

      1 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Streamline 8500E

      I worked at STK when Sun bought STK.... the other day I even found Scott McNeilly's "Welcome to the family gang...." letter.

      What followed after the aquisition was attrocious:

      -The Sun sales guys only wanted the STK accounts, so that they could sell servers to STK's customers.

      -Sun Services Management got embarrassed by the quality of STK customer service and resulting customer loyalty. That had to be destroyed ASAP.

      - Sun marketing put the STK logo on Sun's sub-standard 'storedge' products

      At least at Oracle most of those Sun C*nts got what they deserved....

      2 1 Reply
  8. kain preacher

    For the past decade I've been hearing about how tape is a dead medium, how tape is dying. Yet it's still here. Funny how nothing has real surpassed tape. It's cheap reliable storage that can store large quantities of data.

    5 0 Reply
    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      True, but in this case it looks like Oracle's propitiatory format is the one biting the dust.

      If ever there was a reason to move to a tape that more than one supplier provides, this is it. Plus the nice feeling of not having your gonads in Larry's money-extracting vise.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Loud Speaker
        Reply Icon

        You were even thinking of trusting your backups to Oracle? Maybe. Under extreme duress.

        Archives- not on this planet!

        I have read back 1/2" tapes after 30 years. Obviously not with the technology used to write them. Multiple suppliers and compatibility is essential for archival use.

        There's no chance a shed load of hard drives will be readable in 30 years - SATA will be gone in 5 years, and SAS compatibility probably will too in 10 years. Helium will leak out in a lot less than 30 years.

        2 1 Reply
  9. O RLY

    Headline

    I read the headline and immediately followed Betteridge's Law of Headlines by answering "No."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

    1 0 Reply
  10. PassiveSmoking

    Meh

    There's been plenty of stories about the impending death of tape in the 2010s. And in the 2000s. And the 1990s...

    3 0 Reply
  11. David Austin

    Perfect for SMB

    Yes, it's painful for the 5-100 people companies to shell the 3 grand needed for an LTO Drive, a pile of tapes, and Backup Exec (Plus Agents), but after the initial cost it runs and runs and runs, often outliving the server it came with, and moving into the next one.

    Nearly every client I've set a tape drive up for has retrieved some desperately needed data from years ago, or done a bare metal recovery from a tape, easially justifying the initial outlay. Great for taking accounting year end backups or sending copies out for legal/compliance purposes too.

    Not the cheapest solution, but still one of the best despite "tape dying" since I started in this industry.

    6 0 Reply
  12. Mike 16

    To be fair

    The cassette recorder on my KIM-1 seems to be pining for the fjords, but I still have access to a lovely septet of IBM 729s.

    2 0 Reply
  13. Peter Quodling

    Will we never learn

    Years ago, I was at a Conference, and one of the speakers was a design engineer for DLT He was pigeon-holed by a DAT Tape fanboi, and asked "What do you think of 'Brand X' DAT?" - The response was brilliant - "Great for Backups - terrible for restores".

    I have built Multiple STK (WolfCreek/PowderHorn) configs - still some of the sexist technology hardware on the planet.

    4 0 Reply
    1. Down not across
      Reply Icon

      Re: Will we never learn

      "What do you think of 'Brand X' DAT?" - The response was brilliant - "Great for Backups - terrible for restores".

      I concur. I've never had any issues, apart from occasional dirty heads, with QIC (the proper ones, not MC or Travan), 8mm (Exabyte) or LTO (or even old DECtape) tapes. DAT has always been lottery (about same chance of winning too...). Can't say the same for DAT at all, which is a lottery (and about same chance of winning) suggesting the 4mm tape being inadequate for the job.

      1 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Will we never learn

      Well STK has had a few duds, too. I once had to pickup 4 X STK SD-3 drives and it turned my station wagon into a low rider...

      On the tape side many would agree that the 9840 was an amazing piece of technology. And the 9940 tape threading mechanism was a beauty to watch with the covers off.

      Now - it's many years later and the fact that a LTO is even mentioned in the same sentence as T10K is a sad thing.

      Even the Sun and Oracle sales people appreciated the margin in STK tape products.

      A T10K drive is just as proprietory as an IBM Jaguar, or whatever they're called these days. Both of them are leagues above LTO and the people that buy them know it.

      I've built many STK libraries and it was one of my most fun and memorable times in IT.

      Moving from STK to Sun felt like arriving on planet Vogon.

      3 0 Reply

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