* Virtual Tape Library promises easy deployment and remote monitoring
During the last several weeks I have written separately about virtualized tape technology, companies forming technology partnerships, and back-up appliances. Today, let’s look at an example of all three: an appliance that contains a virtualize tape solution, and that has resulted from the joint efforts of two separate vendors.
Why would anyone want a virtual tape appliance? For all the reasons that make both virtual tape environments and appliances winning technologies.
As far as virtual tape is concerned, remember how it operates: it is disk that the rest of your operating environment thinks is tape, so all your existing tape-focused procedures work just fine with it and there is no need to change them. Second, disk is almost always faster than tape. Third, disk is inherently less failure-prone than tape, which can fall victim to media or mechanical errors (obviously disk drives die too, but that becomes a non-issue when disks are configured as high availability RAID devices).
Now keep in mind the rules of the road for appliances (virtual tape appliances should of course answer to the same set of usability standards as do all other appliances). That is, they must do something that is fundamentally useful (and hopefully, do it well), they must be easy to install (I think in terms of a “15 minute installation benchmark”), and they must – to as great a degree as possible – adhere to the turnkey idea of “set it and forget it.”
FalconStor and Network Engines pooled their resources and last week brought to market a virtual tape appliance that seems to address all the requirements I have listed. The Virtual Tape Library (VTL) promises easy deployment (although I am not sure yet whether meets my “15 minute installation benchmark”), can be remotely monitored and, like any real appliance, is optimized to support its application (it has a data transfer rate in excess of 100M bit/sec).
Network Engines builds the box, which comes with FalconStor’s IPStor software to automate tape mirroring, replication and vaulting. Put one of these on your Fibre Channel-based or IP-based storage-area network and it can provide backup and recovery services for up to 10 hosts through using either BackUpExec or NetBackUp.
The VTL Appliance comes with two Gigabit Ethernet ports on the front, and may be used as a stand-alone appliance or may be connected via Fibre Channel or SCSI to a physical tape library.
For more on this, check out the vendors’ Web sites at http://www.falconstor.com and http://www.networkengines.com
