The library media capacity can be increased by using hardware compression (2:1 compression ratio for Ultrium 5 and below tape drives, and 2.5:1 for Ultrium 8, 7 and 6 tape drives). 

The TS2900 tape autoloader has a 6 Gbps single-port SFF-8088 SAS connector. This is the same connector for all of the other IBM tape products that support the SAS interface. The tape drive is integrated into the library. There are no tape drive field-replaceable units (FRUs) or customer-replaceable units (CRUs) because the entire library is a CRU. 

Designed for tape automation, the TS2900 tape autoloader can be attached to many different systems. 

For more information and a list of supported operating systems, see this website: 

http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/storage/ssic 

Depending on which generation of IBM Ultrium tape drive is installed in the TS2900 tape autoloader, the following data cartridges can be used: 

GLYPH<SM590000> IBM LTO Ultrium 12 TB data cartridge or 12 TB WORM cartridge when the IBM Ultrium 8 tape drive is installed. The Ultrium 8 tape drive can write up to 12 TB native capacity and up to 30 TB with a 2.5:1 compression ratio. IBM Ultrium 8 tape drives can read and write LTO Ultrium 7 data cartridges, it do not support earlier LTO Ultrium data cartridges. 

GLYPH<SM590000> IBM LTO Ultrium 9 TB data cartridges are specially formatted LTO Ultrium 7 data cartridges which can be used in the LTO 8 drive. In this case these tapes will be formatted as media format M8 and labeled as M8 media. This allows the LTO8 drive to use Ultrium 7 media with the same performance as Ultrium 8 media and a higher capacity than Ultrium 7. M8 format media will provide native capacity of 9 TB. It has a compressed capacity of 22.5TB with a 2.5:1 compression ratio. 

Note:  LTO7 media with the M8 format can only be used on LTO 8 drives, and cannot be reformatted for read in a LTO7 drive. 

Using M8 media required the latest version of drive and library FW to be installed. 

See “M8 format” on page 74 for more details about M8 format. 

GLYPH<SM590000> IBM LTO Ultrium 6 TB data cartridge or 6 TB WORM cartridge when the IBM Ultrium 7 tape drive is installed. The Ultrium 7 tape drive can write up to 6 TB native capacity and up to 15 TB with a 2.5:1 compression ratio. IBM Ultrium 7 tape drives can read and write LTO Ultrium 6 data cartridges, read LTO Ultrium 5 data cartridges, and do not support earlier LTO Ultrium data cartridges. 

GLYPH<SM590000> IBM LTO Ultrium 2.5 TB data cartridge or 2.5 TB WORM cartridge when the IBM Ultrium 6 tape drive is installed. The Ultrium 6 tape drive can write up to 2.5 TB native capacity and up to 6.25 TB with a 2.5:1 compression ratio. IBM Ultrium 6 tape drives can read and write LTO Ultrium 5 data cartridges, read LTO Ultrium 4 data cartridges, and do not support earlier LTO Ultrium data cartridges. 

GLYPH<SM590000> IBM LTO Ultrium 1.5 TB data cartridge or 1.5 TB WORM cartridge when the IBM Ultrium 5 tape drive is installed. The Ultrium 5 tape drive can write up to 1.5 TB native capacity and up to 3.0 TB with a 2:1 compression ratio. IBM Ultrium 5 tape drives can read and write LTO Ultrium 4 data cartridges, read LTO Ultrium 3 data cartridges, and do not support earlier LTO Ultrium data cartridges. 

The library has a capacity of a maximum of nine tape cartridges, which provides a maximum media capacity of up to 108 TB (270 TB with a 2.5:1 compression ratio) of data storage using LTO 8 media. 

