Offtopic: The LTO8 media situation

[mkretzer]

Hello,

does anyone know when the LTO 8 media situation is getting resolved? The lawsuit between Sony Corporation and FujiFilm makes it nearly impossible to get Media right now. We are trying for two months now, no luck!

Markus

[Dima P.]

Hello Markus,

Do not have anything to share unfortunately. As far as I see customers are using LTO7 formatted as LTO7M as a replacement of LTO8.

[Reklov]

Hi,
@Dima P.
How can I format the LTO7M Tape with Veeam ? I can't find this in B&R Tape Inventory. Or means Erase as well format ?

[Dima P.]

Hello Reklov,

Formatting should be performed via native vendor tools as Veeam B&R does not provide any LTO format modification capabilities.

[mkretzer]

@Dima P
You can indeed format LTO7 Tapes as M7 with Veeam - just put on the correct barcode for M7 and do a quick erase. We do it all the time!

[Reklov]

@mkretzer
I tryed ist out and it works. Capacity is after earase 8,2 TB.
But you must have a Tapedrive/Library with barcodereader.
Regards
Volker

[Dima P.]

Wow, thanks for sharing folks!

[Reklov]

In addition:
These Tapes can only be processed by a LTO8 Drive and must be "unused" that they can be formatted als "M".
They will never be readable by a LTO7 or later, on a LTO9 Drive.
Regards Volker

[NNa]

The Dell TL1000 with SAS LTO-8 drive does support "LTO-7 M formatted media" according to the Dell Powervault_tape_compatibility_matrix january 2019.

Does Veeam v9.5 U4 support "LTO-8M" media in LTO-8 tapelibraries?
Veeam tape Manual only mention LTO-3 tape drive and higher

[veremin]

Hi, Nico,

Your post has been merged into existing discussion, kindly, check the answers provided above.

Thanks!

[mkretzer]

Any news about the whole LTO8 situation?

[Dima P.]

It looks like the situation is moving somewhere: LTO-8 tape media patent lawsuit cripples supply as Sony and Fujifilm face off in court, but we cant see any significant progress or dates when lto8 media will go on sale again.

[nitramd]

Hello.

I just received this email from Quantum Corp regarding LTO tape availability; it also mentions LTO-8. Below is the gist of the email:

"To Our Valued Tape Customers and Tape Users Worldwide:

We are pleased to announce that the issues affecting production and supply of LTO media have been resolved, and LTO media for all generations is now available.

More specifically:
• LTO-4, LTO-5, LTO-6, and LTO-7 media are all generally available worldwide with standard lead times. Check with your authorized reseller or local Quantum representative for quotes.
• LTO-8 media is still ramping production, and our top priority is to clear our backlog, which will happen starting this quarter. Worldwide general availability will be achieved within a few months once backlog has been fulfilled.

We are encouraging all customers that have pending requirements for LTO-8 media to book orders as soon as possible [go2.quantum.com], so we can effectively manage the queue of orders we have and expedite delivery as much as possible."

The link above references Quantum's contact webpage: https://www.quantum.com/en/company/contact-us

Hope this helps.

[Dima P.]

nitramd,

Extremely happy to hear that and thank you for sharing with the community!

[DarthDave]

I reached out to our great contacts @ Quantum and their Head of Communications and Eric Bassier, Senior Director Products got right back to us confirming this excellent news and providing this external link, where Eric is quoted:

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... Generation