Open RAO Technology Transforms LTO 10 Read Performance

The tape storage industry has spent decades optimizing write performance and carefully evaluating ingest speeds for LTO tape. Read operations, particularly restore and recovery scenarios, have historically received far less attention. IBM’s introduction of Open RAO (Recommended Access Order) in its LTO tape drives represents a major shift in this long-standing dynamic, delivering read performance improvements of up to 80 percent through intelligence embedded directly in the drive hardware.

For organizations managing petabyte-scale archives, this is not just a technical enhancement. It represents a meaningful leap in tape’s value for disaster recovery and data restoration workflows. The difference between locating and beginning a restore operation in minutes versus hours can determine whether recovery time objectives are met or missed, and whether business continuity plans succeed or fail.

The Sequential Access Challenge

Tape’s linear, sequential nature has always been both its greatest strength and its most significant limitation. Unlike disk storage, where data can be accessed randomly with minimal performance impact, tape requires physical movement of the media past read and write heads. When an application requests multiple files scattered across a tape cartridge, traditional tape drives must repeatedly reposition the tape for each read operation.

This mechanical overhead compounds rapidly during large restore jobs. The challenge is amplified in modern backup environments that rely on deduplication, compression, and incremental backups, which often fragment data across tape media. A single restore job may require accessing dozens or even hundreds of non-contiguous data segments, each triggering a time-consuming locate operation.

For organizations with recovery time objectives measured in hours, these delays can push traditional tape restore performance beyond acceptable limits.

Open RAO Intelligence at the Drive Level

IBM’s Open RAO technology addresses this challenge through a straightforward but highly effective approach. Backup applications provide the tape drive with a list of files to be read, and the drive itself determines the most efficient access sequence. Instead of reading files in the order requested by the application, the drive intelligently reorders read operations to minimize tape movement.

The “Open” in Open RAO is significant. This is an industry-standard capability defined within the LTO 10 specification, not a proprietary IBM extension. Any backup software vendor can implement support for Open RAO, and any LTO 10 compliant drive can take advantage of it. This ensures the benefits extend across the tape ecosystem without creating vendor lock-in.

Equally important is where the intelligence resides. The optimization logic is embedded directly in the drive firmware, not in external software or tape library controllers. Once the application submits the file list, the drive analyzes the physical layout of data on the tape and calculates the optimal access pattern independently.

Performance Impact Beyond Incremental Improvement

IBM testing shows that Open RAO can deliver read performance improvements of up to 86 percent compared to traditional sequential access patterns. These gains are not theoretical results achieved under laboratory conditions but reflect real-world restore scenarios.

One of the most meaningful improvements appears in time to first byte. Traditional tape restores include several sources of latency, including locating the correct cartridge, loading it into a drive, positioning the tape to the first requested file, and initiating the read. In large libraries, these steps can add up to tens of minutes before data delivery begins.

Open RAO significantly reduces this delay by optimizing tape positioning. When multiple files are requested, the drive begins reading the physically nearest file first and proceeds in the order that minimizes movement. Applications receive files in this optimized sequence and can begin processing data far sooner than with traditional restore methods.

In disaster recovery scenarios, this acceleration can be decisive. A restore job involving hundreds of scattered files that once took hours may now complete in a fraction of the time, helping organizations stay within recovery time objectives.

Implementation Advantages

Because Open RAO intelligence resides in the drive firmware, organizations do not need to upgrade tape libraries, replace management software, or deploy additional middleware to benefit. If the backup application supports Open RAO and the drives are LTO 10 compliant, optimization occurs automatically.

This design also future-proofs the technology. As backup software vendors enhance their Open RAO implementations, existing LTO 10 drive installations benefit immediately. While firmware updates may improve algorithms over time, the core capability is available from day one.

Standardization through the LTO consortium ensures interoperability. A backup application that supports Open RAO will work consistently across all compliant LTO 10 drives, reducing risk for vendors and end users alike and encouraging broader adoption.

Practical Deployment Considerations

To realize Open RAO’s benefits, backup applications must implement support for the feature. Organizations evaluating LTO 10 should confirm that their software vendors support Open RAO and understand the expected rollout timelines.

The greatest performance gains occur in complex restore scenarios involving many small files, incremental backups, or deduplicated data. Simple sequential restores of contiguous data see limited benefit because there is little opportunity for optimization.

Library architecture also influences outcomes. In very large libraries, cartridge selection and loading times may still dominate restore latency. Even in these environments, however, reducing tape repositioning overhead by up to 80 percent translates into meaningful end-to-end performance improvements.

The Broader Context

Open RAO arrives at a critical moment for tape technology. Organizations face exponential data growth, stricter retention requirements, and rising costs for flash and disk driven in part by AI-related demand. Tape’s economic advantages, particularly its low power consumption and cost efficiency, are increasingly attractive for long-term archive storage.

Historically, tape has struggled with the perception that it is too slow for practical recovery. By dramatically improving read performance, Open RAO directly challenges that perception. While tape remains a sequential medium, the real-world penalty associated with that limitation has been significantly reduced.

Conclusion

Why has such a meaningful feature received so little attention? That remains unclear. Hyperscalers already using tape likely recognize its importance, as restore times are critical at scale. Much of the broader market, however, has yet to fully appreciate the impact Open RAO can have on recovery workflows.

There are still open questions around implementation, including which host software supports Open RAO, how availability differs between LTO 9 and LTO 10 versus IBM TS series drives, and whether behavior varies between half-height and full-height LTO drives. The LTO Show will explore these topics in upcoming content, including articles with detailed input from manufacturer partners.

For more information from IBM, visit
https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/137a1e23d8dba733

Pete Paisley is the host of The LTO Show, the premier podcast for leaders in the LTO tape storage hardware community. Please reach out with story ideas or comments. We respond to each directly at pete@ltoshow.com.

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