LASTING INNOVATION

The LTO logo on every HP cartridge is your guarantee that you have a product that is 100% read/write compatible with any LTO Ultrium drive.

WHEREVER YOU SEE THE ULTRIUM LOGO, COMPATIBILITY IS SOMETHING YOU CAN DEPEND ON.

2 3

All LTO Ultrium branded media, be it HP,

Fujifilm or any other brand, is certified for

use in any LTO Ultrium device, such as an IBM

tape drive or an Oracle StorageTek library.

LTO format compliance is verified by MAC,

a wholly independent company that regulates

the Linear Tape Open (LTO) format. No media

product is permitted to bear the LTO Ultrium

logo unless it passes all the tests required by

the relevant format specification.

Every HP LTO Ultrium cartridge meets and

conforms to the licensing and certification for

the Ultrium logo, from LTO-1 through to LTO-5

and including the Universal Cleaning Cartridge.

HP designs, builds and tests media and

drives together to provide lasting solutions that

customers can depend on, even in the most

intensive, automated environments.

Because Ultrium is an open format that requires

independent qualification, HP compatibility with

other LTO Ultrium products is something you can

take for granted. The LTO logo on every HP

cartridge is your guarantee that you have a

product that is 100% read/write compatible

with any LTO Ultrium drive. If anyone tells you

otherwise, they couldn’t be more wrong.

Compliance testing – what does this mean?LTO Ultrium is very tightly specified. As well

as the cartridge shell and other physical

features, the standard covers the format of

how information and data is written to the

media. Like Coca Cola, the format ‘recipe’

is very tightly controlled. And like Coca

Cola, wherever you buy an Ultrium cartridge,

whoever makes it, and whatever drive you

run it on, it’s 100% Ultrium.

But unlike Coca Cola, the format’s inventors

have no right to set or alter the rules to gain

competitive advantage. HP, along with its

LTO Technology Provider Company (TPC)

partners IBM and Quantum, assured the

integrity of LTO by developing a robust Ultrium

specification and verification procedure.

They passed all responsibility for policing it to

an independent Compliance and Verification

Entity (CVE) – MAC - administered by LMI.

That means neither HP, IBM or Quantum can

change the format or its requirements, even

if they wanted to. Again, this is a sacrosanct

principle of the LTO Ultrium format.

MAC is highly qualified for the role and as

co-developers HP, IBM and Quantum have

taken great care to administer and execute

a compliance test process that is equitable

to all licensees. The LTO Ultrium Logo

Certification requires that each manufacturer

must demonstrate read/write format compliance

with 17 different tapes on all three drives (HP,

IBM and Quantum) to qualify for the logo.

HP LTO Ultrium media testing – the extra mileSo is there ever a situation where one

manufacturer’s Ultrium may be different

from another’s. Well, in the case of HP LTO

Ultrium media, there is a distinction.

To carry the HP brand, designated data

cartridges must satisfy an exhaustive battery

of additional quality measures that relate

directly to how the product is used in

real-life situations when real data and

real businesses are at stake.

As a leader in hardware and media for

all of the mainstream tape technologies,

HP has established comprehensive R&D and

manufacturing programmes to scrutinise the

performance of tape backup solutions under

every conceivable kind of stress.

“The LTO logo on every HP cartridge is your guarantee that you have a product that is 100% read/write compatible with any LTO Ultrium drive. If anyone tells you otherwise, they couldn’t be more wrong.

Compatibility is crucial in allowing businesses to protect their investments in a particular storage technology whilst taking full advantage of a competitive and dynamic market. That’s why compatibility is the cornerstone of the LTO Ultrium format devised by HP, IBM and Quantum, and supported by many of the world’s leading storage vendors.

4

© Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. 4AA3-8564EEE Produced in January 2012

Get connectedwww.hp.com/go/getconnected

Get the inside view on tech trends, alerts andHP solutions for better business outcomes

LASTING INNOVATION

HP tests its media to extremes

so that you don’t have to. And whilst

no vendor can predict the future, or offer a

cast-iron guarantee, the scale, breadth and

depth of our testing gives us more confidence

that your data will be safe on HP tapes, no

matter which brand of hardware you own. HP

backs its product 100%, to the extent that we

will exchange your HP branded data cartridges

if you are dissatisfied with how they perform.

HP test procedures include both traditional

back up and restore, as well as the archival

model that is increasingly tape’s primary

purpose in businesses with huge content assets.

Archiving typically requires the successive

use of many brand new cartridges when the

tape is at its most abrasive. In order to test for

such usage, HP LTO cartridges are subjected

to ongoing Green Tape tests, using both

HP and non-HP LTO drives.

To complement the

Green Tape tests, a series of

“full capacity – single cartridge/multiple

usage” tests are also conducted on an ongoing

basis, again using HP and non-HP LTO drives.

Such tests represent the opposite usage

pattern to intense ‘use once’ Green Tape

archival model. In this way, HP covers the

extremes of enterprise backup and archive

using LTO Ultrium tape on both HP and

non-HP devices. We go the extra mile

so that you don’t have to.

For additional information on CV testing and

LTO Open Standards, go to: http://www.lto.org