MagStor Take
A record 152.9 exabytes in a single year is the market casting a very clear vote — not on speculation, but on deployed infrastructure. For M&E and archive IT teams watching unstructured data compound faster than budgets allow, that volume confirms what the $/TB math already says: LTO cold-tier capacity at scale is where the economics land. MagStor's PetaByte Machine M3640 puts 64 PB compressed (640 slots, LTO-10 basis) on the floor for $77,999 — the kind of concrete, on-prem answer the shipment curve is pointing toward.
The Story
The LTO Program's annual tape media shipment report, covered by HPCwire/BigDATAwire, put 2023 full-year compressed capacity shipped at 152.9 exabytes — a 3.14% year-over-year gain and a new record. The growth is attributed to surging data generation from hyperscalers, enterprises, and AI workloads that demand cost-efficient cold storage at depth. The report underscores LTO's total cost of ownership, air-gap security posture, and sustainability profile as purchase drivers alongside raw capacity.
Source
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