HPE StoreEver MSL LTO-9 Ultrium 45000 Fibre Channel Drive Upgrade Kit (R6Q74A)

R6Q74A is the HPE StoreEver MSL LTO-9 Ultrium 45000 Fibre Channel Drive Upgrade Kit: a half-height LTO-9 tape drive with Fibre Channel interface, mounted for HPE MSL libraries. HPE's MSL Entry-level QuickSpecs list it for the MSL 1/8 Autoloader, MSL2024, MSL3040 and MSL6480, and PartSurfer gives its service spare as P37365-001. The kit holds the drive and documentation.

Interfaces are two LC optical Fibre Channel connectors (8Gb native FC in the autoloader specification) plus one RJ-45 Ethernet data verification port. The kit is TAA compliant. Drive kits are hot-replaceable: HPE says the drive should be powered down before removal, but the library itself can stay on.

From HPE's LTO drive QuickSpecs, LTO-9 stores 18TB native or 45TB compressed (2.5:1) per cartridge at a 300 MB/s native sustained rate, reads and writes LTO-8 and LTO-9 media, and supports AES 256-bit hardware encryption and LTFS. Each new LTO-9 cartridge needs a one-time media initialization before first use; HPE says most finish within an hour but some take up to 2 hours, which matters when planning the first backup on new media.

Siblings: R6Q75A is the same LTO-9 kit with SAS (two Mini-SAS HD connectors) for hosts without a Fibre Channel SAN. Q6Q67A is the LTO-8 FC kit (12TB native, reads and writes LTO-7 and LTO-8). HPE lists LTO-9 drives as reading and writing only LTO-8 and LTO-9 media, so LTO-7 cartridges need an LTO-8 drive.

To confirm fit, check the library model, its firmware level for LTO-9 support, and whether your backup host connects by FC or SAS.

More from this family: HPE Tape.