IBM TS4500 Tape Library

Scalable, Secure, and Efficient Enterprise Backup

IBM TS4500 is IBM’s modular, high-density tape library designed for secure backup and long-term data retention at scale. It supports LTO and IBM enterprise tape technologies, enabling organisations to expand capacity and throughput while reducing storage footprint, power consumption and total cost of ownership.

What is the IBM TS4500 Tape Library?

The IBM TS4500 is a modular, scalable tape automation system designed for efficient long-term data retention, rapid backup, and streamlined archiving workflows. Offering flexibility in drive and media configurations, it supports multiple generations of LTO Ultrium and IBM Enterprise tape drives to address evolving storage needs.

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Key Features and Benefits

Scalable Capacity

Expandable from small to multi-petabyte configurations to address growing data volumes.
Supports a wide range of tape drives — including LTO Ultrium generations and IBM Enterprise Tape drives.

High-Density Storage

High cartridge density design optimizes data centre floor space.

Flexible Configurations

Modular design enables customized configurations that align storage capacity and throughput to business needs.

Enterprise-Class Reliability

Robust redundant components with built-in diagnostic and predictive failure detection.

Automation & Integration

Supports advanced robotic automation for fast, efficient tape handling.
Seamless integration with IBM Spectrum Archive, Tivoli Storage Manager, and other backup software solutions.

Energy Efficient

Designed to minimize power consumption and environmental impact through intelligent drive handlers and cooling.

Powerful tools for backup, cyber-resilience, virtualisation, and hybrid cloud data control.

All things IBM Software

Enterprise virtual tape library for mainframe and open systems.

Get To Know IBM TS7700

Typical Use Cases

IBM TS4500 is increasingly deployed as part of a cyber-resilient backup and long-term archive tier, providing an immutable, offline layer that protects data from ransomware, insider threats and accidental deletion while reducing long-term storage cost.

Secure Data Archiving: Comply with regulatory requirements by securely archiving critical, long-lived data.
Backup & Restore: Accelerate backup windows and streamline restores with automated tape access.
Disaster Recovery: Deploy as part of a hybrid backup and recovery strategy, integrating cloud or disk tiers.
Media & Entertainment: Manage large unstructured data sets efficiently, including video and multimedia assets.

Physical & Technical Specifications

Scalability: Up to thousands of cartridges and multiple tape drives.
Drive Support: Compatible with IBM LTO Ultrium and Enterprise Tape drives.
Robotics: High throughput mechatronics for rapid automated tape movement.
Management: Integrated software for ease of operation and media lifecycle management.

Beyond traditional backup and archive, the IBM TS4500 is commonly used to build a cost-efficient retention tier for large, fast-growing datasets—such as security logs, research data, and long-term business records—where keeping data accessible and well-governed matters as much as capacity.

For regulated environments, TS4500 supports enterprise retention and security capabilities such as encryption and WORM media, and it can proactively monitor archived media with policy-based verification. It also simplifies access to tape-stored data through IBM Spectrum Archive, making tape a practical component of modern, tiered data protection strategies.