LTO Ultrium tape drives

A description of the LTO Ultrium tape drives.

There are eight generations of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium tape drives. The newest of these drives, the IBM TS1080 tape drive Model F8A, is a dual-ported drive that facilitates 8 Gbps Fibre Channel connectivity. This drive is also known as the Ultrium 8 tape drive and is differentiated by its machine type and model number, 3588 F8A.

You can identify all Ultrium 2 and later Ultrium tape drives by the logo at the front of the drive or by the label at the rear of the drive's canister. You can identify the Ultrium 1 tape drive by the label at the rear of its canister. An Ultrium 3 write-once-read-many (WORM)-capable drive can be identified by the level of code it contains. If the code level is 54K1 or higher, the Ultrium 3 drive is capable of WORM functionality. Ultrium 3 and newer tape drives with WORM capability can recognize WORM-compatible media.

Ultrium 3 drives with WORM-capable firmware and newer Ultrium tape drives read and write non-WORM media. This means that you can load WORM-capable firmware on your Ultrium 3 and newer tape drives and use any media that are supported by these drives. In this case, only the data that is written on the WORM media is treated as WORM data; data written on other types of media can be overwritten.

Ultrium tape drives do not read from or write to 3592 tape cartridges, and 3592 tape drives do not read or write to Ultrium tape cartridges.

The Ultrium tape drives can read tapes that have been written by non-IBM Ultrium drives. They also write to tapes that can be read by non-IBM Ultrium drives.

All generations of Ultrium tape drives and cartridges can reside in the same frame.

To enhance library performance, Ultrium 2 and newer Ultrium tape drives include speed matching, channel calibration, and power management. Speed matching dynamically adjusts the drive's native (uncompressed) data rate to the slower data rate of a server. Channel calibration customizes each read/write data channel for optimum performance. The customization enables compensation for variations in the recording channel transfer function, media characteristics, and read/write head characteristics. Power management reduces the drive's power consumption during idle power periods.

Encryption

Ultrium 4 and later tape drives are encryption capable, which means they can convert data into a cipher that ensures data security. To perform encryption, the drive must be encryption enabled by your selection of one of three methods of encryption management. Two of these methods, system-managed and library-managed encryption, require the purchase of FC 1604 (Transparent LTO Encryption). A key is required to encrypt and decrypt the data. How a key is generated, maintained, controlled, and transmitted depends on the operating environment where the Ultrium 4 or later tape drive is installed. Some data management applications are capable of performing key management. For an alternative solution, IBM provides a key manager that works in conjunction with the keystore of your choice to perform all necessary key management tasks. There is no recovery for lost encryption keys. For more information about encryption, see the links to related topics below. Also refer to the IBM Encryption Key Manager and Tivoli® Key Lifecycle Manager publications listed in Related information.

To ensure that your tape drive conforms to IBM's specifications for reliability, use only IBM LTO Ultrium tape cartridges. You can use other LTO-certified data cartridges, but they might not meet IBM standards of reliability.