Magnetic tape data storage has been around since the 1960s, and today’s LTO tape storage technology is just a minor evolution of the original. Today, many companies are switching from LTO tape due to the costs of maintaining and expanding their libraries, including challenges around the life expectancy of the media format, data integrity, and access.

Fortunately, the inherent limitations of LTO tape have helped spawn new storage technologies that address the need for economical, scalable, and highly durable active archival systems. Among the new technologies, object storage has quickly set itself apart as an extremely scalable, flexible, and cost-effective technology. In this paper, we will examine how object storage stacks up against LTO tape for active archives and backup.

In addition to a detailed total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis covering both capital and operational expenses, this paper will look at the opportunity costs of not leveraging the real-time data access of object storage to monetize existing data.