Exascale Tape Library Installed by Spectra Logic at SLAC National Accelerator Library

Spectra Logic has installed a new 18-frame exascale Tape Library at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, USA. The 18-frame Spectra TFinity Tape Library is the foundation for the data storage system known as The Tape Library, which stores LTO-9 tape drives and media. Spectra Logic claims that the TFinity is the biggest and most feature-rich tape library, giving it a significant advantage over rivals in terms of storage density and size. LTO tape technology, IBM's TS11X0, and Oracle's T10000x enterprise tape technology are compatible with the library. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory conducts sophisticated scientific tool research, development, and application. It now converts light from celestial objects into data and aids the Rubin Observatory's 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Every few days for a decade, the project will collect data on the whole Southern sky, which will require significant storage. 

The laboratory, which consists of five cooperative research centers and facilities, is run by Stanford University on behalf of the US Department of Energy Office of Science. By 2023, the laboratory projects that its overall storage requirements will exceed two exabytes. Using a tape library might make sense as a cost-effective storage option for huge data collections, costing only a few cents per GB. In November 2018, Spectra Logic introduced the IBM TS11X0 tape formatting, which can write up to 20TB of data onto a single cartridge, and for the first time, was able to put two exabytes of storage onto a single tape library.