News U.S. Gov't eliminates tape data storage at the GSA to save $1M per year, but tape isn't dead yet

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Hmmm... 1m per year... that's like what?

How many terabytes are we talking about? How is the data accessed / frequency / backup processes etc?

Without knowing that, the number is completely irrelevant. Never mind that be absolutely peanuts in terms of the USA budget! Actually less than one peanut kernel!
 
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70,000 tapes is probably a few petabytes of data. It is possible it is 1/2 the worst case amount if the storage software was configured to write two copies to separate volumes. That data has specific retention requirements. Typically 5 years after end of contract for US Govt, but some may have "forever" requirements. That data has to go somewhere. So lets assume that cloud storage is the answer. The cost to transfer several petabytes of data to AWS (or Oracle) is non-trivial in terms of hardware and labor. That data then has a continuing retention cost.
I have worked with large (10,000 volume) tape archives. The costs for that amount of data is quite small. I definitely don't believe the savings number on this one.
 
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In terms of per TB of storage, you cannot get cheaper than tape. An LTO-8 tape costs about $65/tape and is even cheaper when bought in large batches. Not to mention that a tape library/changer plus drives is cheap and lasts for years. What does DOGE think is going to replace tape? Are they going to buy storage on Amazon S3 because that is going to be VERY expensive. Not to mention all the other issues with putting that information into the cloud.
 
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Kindaian said:
Hmmm... 1m per year... that's like what?

How many terabytes are we talking about? How is the data accessed / frequency / backup processes etc?

Without knowing that, the number is completely irrelevant. Never mind that be absolutely peanuts in terms of the USA budget! Actually less than one peanut kernel!
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My guess is this is information that needs to be archived for at least 7 years. Therefore it is at best reference materials so access will be quite infrequent. AWS Glacier Deep Archive storage is about $1/TB so even without any compression for LTO-8 tapes that means $144/tape required for S3 Glacier Deep Archive. At most a single LTO-8 tape costs $65/tape and obviously buying multiple tapes you get a discount. IF this is as I expect that the tapes will be used for archiving that means at $65/tape you can get over 15k tapes a year for 180PB storage. At $144/year/TB for Glacier you would be spending $25M/year for that in AWS instead. Sounds more like DOGE is going to cost them money than save them money.
 
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kanewolf said:
70,000 tapes is probably a few petabytes of data. It is possible it is 1/2 the worst case amount if the storage software was configured to write two copies to separate volumes. That data has specific retention requirements. Typically 5 years after end of contract for US Govt, but some may have "forever" requirements. That data has to go somewhere. So lets assume that cloud storage is the answer. The cost to transfer several petabytes of data to AWS (or Oracle) is non-trivial in terms of hardware and labor. That data then has a continuing retention cost.
I have worked with large (10,000 volume) tape archives. The costs for that amount of data is quite small. I definitely don't believe the savings number on this one.
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The cheapest storage for AWS is $1/TB/month. Tape is A LOT cheaper than that and don't have yearly costs associated with them outside of a place to keep the tapes.
 
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ravewulf said:
Elon has always been a wrecking ball, destroying existing systems without understanding them until the point that they break and then someone has to clean up the mess
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Yep, and it has resulted in great success. Sometimes it takes people "breaking the mold." It's certainly too risky and unpredictable for how I operate in life, but it works for some people. Breaking something can be a great way to understand it and improve it. Of course, it goes without saying that some things just shouldn't be broken -- it should be a more evolutionary process rather than revolutionary.

Digressing, I wonder if the savings has more to do with the tape system literally being older, i.e. a system that isn't based on the more recent LTO standards, resulting in an excessive amount of tapes (along with lower write speeds as well). As the article author mentioned, hopefully it's not that that DOGE kid has this mentality that tape storage is so dinosaur age and therefore automatically irrelevant.
 
derekullo said:
"Though we have fingernail-sized micro-SD cards that can store 1TB now and consumer SSDs that can transfer data at over 14 MB/s"

You are technically correct!
The best kind of correct!
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jeremyj_83 said:
The cheapest storage for AWS is $1/TB/month. Tape is A LOT cheaper than that and don't have yearly costs associated with them outside of a place to keep the tapes.
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That is the cheapest commercial rate. It is unknown what rate the govt could negotiate.
It is possible that the $1M / year could include the cost of some building(s) that those tape archives live in. Getting rid of the buildings may be the savings.
 
kanewolf said:
That is the cheapest commercial rate. It is unknown what rate the govt could negotiate.
It is possible that the $1M / year could include the cost of some building(s) that those tape archives live in. Getting rid of the buildings may be the savings.
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Given the recent circumstances, I suspect AWS will go for $1.50/TB/month, maybe $1.25/TB/month. Maybe they'll justify it as special security and longevity costs.

Also, it's worth saying that they're not "getting rid of the buildings." They're simply selling the buildings and then paying a lease to use them. The savings are a one-time deal and paper over actual costs.

The purpose of all this isn't efficiency or even savings. It's about privatizing as much of the government as possible. Musk has said so himself repeatedly. Of course they would take out tape storage: Tape storage doesn't make money for AWS and other data center firms, unlike cloud storage.
 
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onigami said:
Given the recent circumstances, I suspect AWS will go for $1.50/TB/month, maybe $1.25/TB/month. Maybe they'll justify it as special security and longevity costs.

Also, it's worth saying that they're not "getting rid of the buildings." They're simply selling the buildings and then paying a lease to use them. The savings are a one-time deal and paper over actual costs.

The purpose of all this isn't efficiency or even savings. It's about privatizing as much of the government as possible. Musk has said so himself repeatedly. Of course they would take out tape storage: Tape storage doesn't make money for AWS and other data center firms, unlike cloud storage.
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Considering these AWS backups would need to be in special government zones then they would probably be more expensive.
 
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jeremyj_83 said:
In terms of per TB of storage, you cannot get cheaper than tape. An LTO-8 tape costs about $65/tape and is even cheaper when bought in large batches. Not to mention that a tape library/changer plus drives is cheap and lasts for years. What does DOGE think is going to replace tape? Are they going to buy storage on Amazon S3 because that is going to be VERY expensive. Not to mention all the other issues with putting that information into the cloud.
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Anything from tape will live in glacier -- which is stored on TAPE !!!!
 
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Well, it makes things easier for Trump to "rewrite history" if there's a massive data loss incident by nuking tape archiving I guess.
 
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Yep, meaningless numbers. For all we know those tapes are reel to reel, which actually ought to be replaced, assuming the data is worth keeping.

The main problem with tape is vendor risk. I mean right now LTO is still a thing, but 30 years ago 8mm was cheaper and more reliable. Anybody got any of that anymore?
 
I guess 1 million a year makes a difference for over time, but that’s barely a drop in the ocean compared to the grand scheme of things.

I hate tape storage personally, rotating tapes is such a nuisance, and long term storage. We finally moved to cloud storage, no idea if it’s more expensive, but I don’t pay the bills so I don’t personally care.
 
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