Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Tape library
Summary
In computer storage, a tape library, sometimes called a tape silo, tape robot or tape jukebox, is a storage device that contains one or more tape drives, a number of slots to hold tape cartridges, a barcode reader to identify tape cartridges and an automated method for loading tapes (a robot). Additionally, the area where tapes that are not currently in a silo are stored is also called a tape library. Tape libraries can contain millions of tapes.
One of the earliest examples was the IBM 3850 Mass Storage System (MSS), announced in 1974.
These devices can store immense amounts of data, ranging from 20 terabytes up to 2.1 exabytes of data as of 2016. Such capacity is multiple thousand times that of a typical hard drive and well in excess of what is capable with network attached storage. Typical entry-level solutions cost around 200,000 USD and cost well in excess of $1 million for a fully expanded and configured library.
For large data-storage, they are a cost-effective solution, with cost per gigabyte as low as 2 cents USD. The tradeoff for their larger capacity is their slower access time, which usually involves mechanical manipulation of tapes. Access to data in a library takes from several seconds to several minutes.
Because of their slow sequential access and huge capacity, tape libraries are primarily used for backups and as the final stage of digital archiving. A typical application of the latter would be an organization's extensive transaction record for legal or auditing purposes. Another example is hierarchical storage management (HSM), in which tape library is used to hold rarely used files from s.
There are several large-scale library-management packages available commercially. Open-Source support includes AMANDA, Bacula, and the minimal mtx program.
Tape libraries commonly have the capability of optically scanning barcode labels which are attached to each tape, allowing them to automatically maintain an inventory of which tapes are where within the library.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.