Tapes are awkward though, since they can't directly satisfy the same random-access use-cases. E.g. even GCS's 'Archive' storage class, for the coldest of the cold, offers sub-second retrieval, so there's at least one copy on HDD or similar at any time.
Tapes are suitable for tape-oriented async-retrieval products (not sure if any Clouds have one?), or for putting _some_ replicas of data on as an implementation detail if the TCO is lower than achieving replication/durability guaranteed from HDD alone. But that still puts a floor on the non-tape cold bytes, where this sort of drive might help.
Tapes are suitable for tape-oriented async-retrieval products (not sure if any Clouds have one?), or for putting _some_ replicas of data on as an implementation detail if the TCO is lower than achieving replication/durability guaranteed from HDD alone. But that still puts a floor on the non-tape cold bytes, where this sort of drive might help.