What's the buzz about virtual tape?

For years, IT professionals have wondered when tape technology would become a thing of the past—getting rid of the need for tape racks, off-site tape storage, and media couriers.

The manual burden of tape management is often the final barrier to lights-out computing. Many Help/Systems customers have been very successful at achieving lights-out computing, despite the limitations of tape technology, usually with the help of Automated Media Library devices (AMLs) and tape stackers. Yet, the number one automation issue remains tape drive errors.

The next step: Virtual tape backups
A Virtual Tape Library (VTL) eliminates the need for manual tape handling and tape couriers. The VTL is actually another disk drive that appears to the Power System as a tape drive. With disk-to-disk backups, you avoid the hassles of manual tape mounts and mechanical moving parts, increasing the reliability of your backups. Just think of how many backups have aborted over the years because of media errors, drive failures, or tape issues!

A VTL solution facilitates automation, makes data recovery easier, converts old tape formats, encrypts data, replicates data across a network, helps remove media errors, and increases the speed of backups and recoveries.

The affordable power of SPHiNX
If you think VTL is too expensive, we used to think so, too. However, we recently decided to partner with Crossroads Systems, maker of  SPHiNX, a dedicated virtual tape appliance for IBM Power Systems. SPHiNX means a dramatic reduction in the cost of VTL backup and recovery solutions.

With SPHiNX, you can back up and restore ten times more data than traditional tape drives with no physical tape to handle, mount, or rewind. And, with fast access to stored data, SPHiNX improves recovery time.

• Many people maintain old tapes and drives for auditors and government regulations, some requiring expensive maintenance contracts. SPHiNX can convert old tapes into a modern format to help you decommission your old technology.
• High Availability (HA) is important for mission-critical business data on Power Systems. You can back up data to your local SPHiNX VTL and use the Internet to copy it to a remote location. You no longer need to use a local IBM i server to duplicate data for off-site storage—making SPHiNX a more affordable HA solution. Plus, you can periodically back up journal receivers that maintain a transaction log of your database changes and duplicate the backups across the network to an off-site location.
• If you’re concerned about encryption to comply with PCI and other government rules for credit card or personal data, SPHiNX provides both data encryption and replication for backups to help meet auditor requirements.
• Recovery is easier because data volumes are contained in the local storage area network (SAN) or at an off-site storage location. There is no need for tape mounts to restore data.

A comprehensive backup and recovery solution
SPHiNX integrates seamlessly with the Robot products to replicate data across your local or wide area network (LAN or WAN), and store it for backup on, and retrieval from, your storage area network (SAN) or other off-site location:

• SPHiNX works with Robot/SAVE to automate backups and recoveries on your Power Systems.
• Team SPHiNX with Robot/SCHEDULE Enterprise to automate cross-platform backup and recovery processes for Windows, UNIX, Linux, and IBM i servers.
• Team SPHiNX with Robot/REPORTS to view audit reports online and store them securely for easy access.

A solid return on investment
To justify the expenditure on any new technology, you must examine the Return On Investment (ROI). When you combine SPHiNX with the Robot products, you can really reduce your costs by:

• Eliminating the cost of tapes. (When you pay up to $100 per tape, this can add up quickly!)
• Removing both the expense and security issues of using a courier to transport tapes to and from your off-site storage facility.
• Eliminating the need for old devices that you maintain only for regulatory compliance.
  Learn more

To learn more about the Robot products and SPHiNX, contact us at 952-933-0609 and talk to your Regional Sales Manager.

Contributed by Tom Huntington, Vice President of Technical Services