Tape Library Benefits
Tributary Systems, Inc.’s , Storage Director™ truly delivers on the promise of
tape virtualization and consolidation. Storage Director can meet and exceed
many tape backup requirements for speed, capacity, compatibility, reliability,
and more. Let’s examine the benefits that Storage Director brings to the tape
library arena.
Drive sharing
Since the host systems are presented with dedicated virtual drives and
libraries from the front end of Storage Director, the physical drives are
“decoupled” from the backup servers and managed by Storage
Director. Therefore, when the data from the disk cache is copied to
the physical tape, a physical drive is dynamically allocated for that
purpose without respect to what backup server originated the data.
This capability takes drive sharing to a new level. Now you can
effectively share all the drives in the library with multiple backup
servers and multiple backup applications.
Library sharing
Storage Director can easily make one SCSI over FC-controlled library
look like many virtual libraries. This “virtual partitioning” of a device
allows it to be shared among multiple hosts, whereas the single,
physical device would not normally be available for sharing. Although
some larger libraries are able to partition a library in a similar manner,
smaller libraries generally do not, so Storage Director could bring that
capability to all libraries.
Library consolidation
Storage Director can also consolidate many small libraries or autochangers into one larger library for a backup server. This “virtual
consolidation” eases library management for the backup application
Storage Director takes
drive sharing to a new
level. Now you can
effectively share all the
drives in a library with
multiple host servers and
multiple backup
applications and utilities
at the same time
TSI Storage Director
 Library partitioning: One real tape library can be presented as
multiple virtual libraries to the backup system.  Library consolidation:
Multiple real tape libraries can be presented as one virtual library to the
backup system.
Performance
With Storage Director come several performance benefits:
Instantaneous mounts - Mounts are all instantaneous to the backup
application since they are virtual mounts; therefore the mount wait
time is basically zero.
Faster than a tape drive - Data can be accepted at up to wire speed.
For a 8Gb FC port with a single virtual drive, that means over
750MB/sec/FC port single stream and over 1,8GB/sec., multiple
streams/8Gb FC. SD can ingest data at well over 5TB/hr into virtual
cache, which is faster than any single, physical drive performance.
With Storage Director, the bottleneck has now moved from tape to the
backup server. Storage Director supports 4Gb and 8Gb FC (NPIV) ,
iSCSI, and ACSLS.
Increased physical drive performance – Because Storage Director
stages the backup data onto a disk cache (InfiniCache) first, the data
transfer from disk to tape may be done in larger bursts, thus providing
for better utilization and performance of the physical tape drive. We
have seen up to a 4X improvement in physical drive performance with
Storage Director, which can lead to more bandwidth capability or cost
savings in the number of drives needed.
Reduced cost and improved reliability
The number of physical drives required for a backup environment is
determined by two primary factors: connectivity and performance.
Connectivity means that if you have n backup servers, you need a
number Tributary has seen up to a 4X of drives assigned to each of
them. Performance says that if you need to move x amount of data in
y amount of time, you need n tape drives.
TSI has seen up to a 4X
Storage Director handles connectivity requirements with virtual drives
and libraries, so the need for a specific number of physical drives is
totally eliminated.
Storage Director, which
The performance requirement is no longer tied to a backup window,
since Storage Director’s front end and InfiniCache (disk cache) provide
more than adequate speed. You can then copy the data to physical
tape within 24 hours or in the time between backups.
Backing up initially to Storage Director’s InfiniCache usually reduces
the number of physical drives required in the system—which translates
to a reduction in cost and improvement in the overall reliability of the
tape library. For example, the backup system “thinks” that it has 12
tape drives, but in reality it only has four. Compare the reliability of a
system with 12 real drives to a system with Storage Director and four
real drives: there is a perceived improvement in reliability for the
given 12 drives.
Greater resilience
When a backup occurs, a tape gets mounted and then the data is
written to tape. As with any electro-mechanical device, sometimes
errors occur. A tape won’t mount or dismount, or errors may occur
during the write operation, causing the backup to fail.
With Storage Director, the backup actually occurs from the backup
server to the InfiniCache, which is much less likely to fail; therefore,
the success rate is much higher.
improvement in physical
drive performance with
can lead to more
bandwidth capability or
cost savings in the number
of physical drives needed.
If a physical tape failure occurs when Storage Director tries to write
the data to tape, it would merely try to mount the tape on a different
drive and try again. If for some reason Storage Director could not
successfully send the data to tape, the data would stay in the cache
until the tape problem was fixed. This method of data protection
allows time for the problem to be resolved without affecting the
backup application. The amount of time that is allowed to fix the
problem depends on the size of the cache, but the minimum would be
24 hours, which is the presumed time between daily backups.
This is another way in which Storage Director can make the library
appear to be more reliable and available.
Additional functionality
Storage Director has many features and functions that can enhance a
physical library. As an example, Storage Director’s Bulk Eject feature
enables the application to eject tapes out of the virtual library one at a
time while they are not ejected out of the physical library until the
operator is ready to remove them. The operator can select a group of
tapes to be ejected at the same time and fill up the cartridge access
port (CAP) or the import/export slots of the physical library. Then
those tapes may be removed from the physical library all at once.
Improved library connectivity
Since Storage Director has iSCSI capability on the front-end (host)
interfaces, it now adds that connection method to the interfaces that
may be used to the library and drives. For example, in low-end
configurations, iSCSI connections could be used in place of parallel
SCSI for both the changer and the drives. In higher-end
configurations, iSCSI could be used for the changer interface and Fibre
Channel could be used for the tape drive interfaces to meet the need
for higher performance. As new interface technologies become
available, the overall tape subsystem will be enhanced automatically.
Storage Director handles
connectivity requirements
with virtual drives and
libraries, so the need for a
specific number of physical
drives is totally eliminated.
Furthermore, Storage
TSI Storage Director
TSI Storage Director
Director has many features
and functions that can
enhance a physical library.
These faster interfaces, along with disk cache technology, can greatly
improve the perceived performance of the tape subsystem, even if the
performance of the physical tape interfaces and drives are a lot lower,
since those back-end operations to physical tape are done in the
background.
Common device drivers/reduced host maintenance
One of the big complaints with tape is that every time a new tape drive
or library comes out, new device drivers need to be developed for the
various operating systems and applications, which require updates to
the backup servers so they can support the new technology.
Storage Director lets you present a common tape drive image, such as
LTO-3/4, to the backup application, and at the same time change the
capacity of the virtual tape to be equal to that of the physical tape. In
other words, if there were LTO-5 /6 drives on the back end, the front
end could present LTO-3/4 drives with 1.5/2.5 TB native capacity. This
capability allows for new tape technology to be introduced without the
need to change all the drivers on the backup servers. Only Storage
Director needs to know how to communicate with the new tape devices.
The same would be true for libraries as well. Where a specific library
type might not be supported by a backup application, Storage Director
can present a library type that is supported. For example, Storage
Director could make an ACSLS-controlled library look like a SCSIcontrolled library, without partitioning , the library for an application
that does not support ACSLS.
Leveraging all library functionality
Generally, backup applications tend to degrade library functionality to
some common point so they can treat all makes and models of tape
libraries in the same way. The primary concern is application
functionality and not to make any particular tape library product look
good, unless it is their own. Therefore, backup applications usually do
not take advantage of any unique functionality that may be present in
some library models.
On the other hand, Tributary Systems works closely with library
manufacturers to learn about any unique functions. Thos functions
can be adopted into Storage Director so that all customers, regardless
of the backup applications they are using, can benefit from all library
capabilities. In this way, Tributary’s products are focused on tape
management and connectivity, making them more robust than typical
backup technology.
Data Deduplication connectivity
Storage Director allows environments that do not normally
support deduplication appliances to store data by policy on
deduplication appliances running VTL or NAS emulations. Storage
Director manages the deduplication appliance as a physical tape
library recognized by the host environment. Functionality is very
similar to actual physical tape libraries.
Storage Director can also accept data deduplicated from backup
applications, like CommVault Simpana.
Tributary Systems Inc. (TSI) is
the global leader in the
development of business savvy
data protection solutions. TSI's
fully integrated solutions are
designed for the most
demanding high availability
backup storage environments
running mission critical
applications on all enterprise
computing platforms including,
IBM® i (AS/400®, iSeries™,
System i®), IBM Power
Systems™, IBM zOS
Mainframes™, AIX®, Linux® ,
HP NonStop™, Open VMS,
VMWare and Windows®. In
addition, TSI serves a customer
base of Fortune Global 20 as
well as middle market
companies in the banking,
financial services, retail,
telecom, cloud and healthcare
industries.
Further Information
For more information about TSI
products, please contact us.
www.tributary.com
Or you can email us at
sales@tributary.com
You may also contact our offices
directly.
1 817-354-8009
1 817-786-3090 fax
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