Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

NERSC is participating in several HPSS (High Performance Storage System) research and development projects as part of the Probe testbed. One of these projects involved beta testing of the IBM 3584 UltraScalable Tape Library, which uses the new ultra-high-density Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium tape drives. Ultrium tape cartridges have a capacity of up to 300 GB of compressed data, greatly reducing the number of cartridges needed to store massive scientific datasets. NERSC's preliminary performance testing indicates that LTO Ultrium technology, with compatible products and media available from several vendors, may be a viable alternative for computer centers seeking higher-density archival storage media with a small footprint and relatively low cost per drive.