Oracle beefs up tape storage

Oracle has redesigned its Sun Microsystem-inherited StorageTek kit to allow one of its gigantic tape libraries to offer 150 petabytes of storage.

The company claims it is the first time a tape library has supported this capacity.

To bring its 150 petabyte vision to reality Oracle expanded the StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System to scale up 100,000 slots instead of the 70,000 that it could when it was still owned by Sun. 

The other key piece was designing its StorageTek LTO-5 tape drives to be supported on StorageTek libraries. 

It’s the first major announcement Oracle has made for its tape storage line that it acquired through its US$7 billion 2009 acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Sun had bought StorageTek in 2005 for a hefty US$4.1 billion, jumping on the post Sarbanes-Oxley back up boom. The move, for Sun, put it in competition with IBM and Sony, the other remaining enterprise tape drive and library makers.