Holographic data storage has the potential to compete with existing magnetic tape drives for cold storage, and one company has a plan to make it commercially viable.
A UK startup hopes to make holographic storage commercially feasible for enterprise data centers by 2027.
HoloMemLtd., based in London and founded in 2020, completed the first trial deployment of its HoloDrive storage system in an existing tape library at a data center run by German tape storage manufacturer BDT Media Automation GmbH. This trial demonstrated that HoloMem's HoloDrive holographic storage cartridge can run within an existing storage infrastructure. HoloMem plans to push for more trials with the goal of mass-producing HoloDrive by 2027.
Holographic storage could serve as a more cost-effective and durable alternative to magnetic tape drives, which currently dominate the market for cold storage, according to Charlie Gale, founder and CEO of HoloMem. Gale’s background includes about a decade of design engineering at Dyson, a technology company known for its household appliances. Gale brought other former Dyson engineers into HoloMem with experience in developing product ideas into commercially viable products.
Typically, companies with very large volumes of archival data use magnetic tape as a low-cost, long-term cold storage option. The problem is tape's relatively limited durability and capacity -- by comparison, holographic storage can store up to 100 TB more data in a small 3D space while meeting similar performance, availability, and durability requirements.
"We're confident that we can present a product offering at a total cost of ownership that comes in around 20% lower than the latest generation of magnetic tape," "that's also not taking into account that we actually have a much longer-lived medium."
Holographic storage devices have a lifespan of up to 50 years, unlike tape, which degrades over time, Gale said. Tape drives can also only write data along the medium's surface, limiting its capacity to two dimensions that will be inadequate for continued data growth in the industry, Gale said.
"It is a data bandwidth concern," he said. "Nothing [else] can speak to the 12x original data creation we're going to experience in the next 10 years."
HoloDrive stores data using a laser to induce a chemical state change within a flexible, light-sensitive polymer film. This allows data to be recorded directly in the film without post-processing. It is similar in concept to exposing a roll of film to light in photography.
HoloDrive is designed to be retrofitted into existing data center infrastructure without requiring any changes to existing systems. It has the same cartridge-based design and uses the same back-end communications protocols as magnetic tape drives. To address security concerns, HoloMem encrypts data at the drive level during writing. HoloMem is still in talks to integrate its drive with commonly used backup software interfaces.
Holographic storage's feasibility challenges
Holographic storage has been in development for decades, but has yet to reach widespread real-world use. HoloMem's product aims to address that issue by adding backward compatibility. Instead of outright replacing traditional LTO drives, the company's goal is to facilitate the migration of data to holographic storage over time, without ripping and replacing existing equipment.
Holographic storage, if it becomes commercially viable, will most likely be used by large cloud providers or organizations that must manage data archives for extended periods, said Brent Ellis, Principal Analyst at Forrester.
"They probably might fit a state archiving system like the Library of Congress, or university libraries," Ellis said. "Look at medical studies where you have to maintain data for a very long time. Those are the use cases that make sense."
Most organizations are scaling down their on-premises data centers, according to Ellis, in favor of moving to the cloud.
HoloMem is confident in its roadmap to surpass LTO-10 write and read speeds by the release of its first commercial product.
Charlie GaleFounder and CEO, HoloMem
"HoloMem's market is essentially somewhere between five or ten hyperscalers in the world," he said. "Now, those hyperscalers buy a lot... So, if they land one, maybe that is enough for them to be commercially viable."
HoloMem must also address the write speed of holographic storage, Ellis said. Write speed depends on factors such as exposure time, the number of square centimeters of media, and the write head configuration.
"HoloMem is confident in its roadmap to surpass LTO-10 write and read speeds by the release of its first commercial product," Gale responded in an email to Informa TechTarget.
Ellis also questioned HoloMem's goal of mass production by 2027.
"LTO has been out for a long time…the people who make those [products] are very good at making them," he said. "This would be a new technology, and there would need to be a sort of proving period [and] some things to address that put me in the skeptical camp."
Alexander Gillis is a Technical Writer and Editor at Informa TechTarget, with more than 8 years of experience writing about technology.
