HPE AP861A – StorageWorks LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 Tape Drive

HPE AP861A – StorageWorks LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 Tape Drive

Overview

The HPE AP861A is an external LTO-4 Ultrium tape drive designed for enterprise backup, archival, and long-term data retention environments. It is deployed by IT administrators and storage architects requiring removable media backup infrastructure for compliance, disaster recovery, and offline archival workflows. The device is commonly used in enterprise backup ecosystems where air-gapped storage and long-term media retention remain operational requirements.

Technically, the AP861A is based on LTO-4 Ultrium technology and provides native storage capacity up to 800GB per cartridge, expandable to 1.6TB with hardware compression. The drive uses a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) host interface, enabling integration into enterprise backup servers and storage infrastructures. LTO-4 media supports AES 256-bit hardware encryption and WORM (Write Once Read Many) functionality for secure archival and compliance-oriented data protection.

In deployment, the tape drive is typically connected to enterprise backup servers running centralized backup software in rack-mounted data center environments. It is used for scheduled backup rotation, offsite media storage, and archival retention policies where removable tape media offers operational and cost advantages over disk-only backup systems.

The AP861A integrates into HPE StorageWorks ecosystems and supports compatibility with standard LTO Ultrium backup infrastructures. It is frequently deployed alongside enterprise backup software platforms handling virtual machine backups, database protection, and long-term archival retention.

A practical deployment scenario includes financial or healthcare organizations maintaining compliance-driven offline backup copies stored in secure offsite facilities while using encrypted LTO cartridges for data protection.

This device is not intended for primary storage workloads or low-latency backup environments requiring instant-access disk-based recovery systems.

Typical Deployment Scenarios

• Enterprise backup and archival infrastructures
• Long-term offline data retention environments
• Compliance-focused secure tape backup systems
• Disaster recovery media rotation deployments
• Rack-mounted backup server integrations

Technical Specifications

Compatibility / Ecosystem

The HPE AP861A integrates into HPE StorageWorks backup ecosystems and enterprise SAS-based backup server infrastructures. It is compatible with LTO-4 Ultrium tape media and enterprise backup software environments supporting tape-based archival operations. The drive is designed for organizations implementing offline backup rotation, compliance retention, and disaster recovery workflows.