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<font face="Helvetica, Arial"><p>TAPE STORAGE AUTOMATION: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT</p>
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With spiraling amounts of information being created, modified, and archived
throughout business enterprises, automation of tape storage has become an
essential tactical decision. Tape libraries featuring DLTtape system components
provide a rugged, scalable, high-performance solution for information management.
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Complex networks made up of servers, workstations, personal computers, and disk
arrays tied into the astounding richness of data sources provide today's
enterprises with new possibilities for success. In today's world, the network IS
the computer. The enterprises that develop the best methods of using information,
guaranteeing its integrity, and maximizing its availability have a tactical edge
over their competition.
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Information is a global resource and must be available 24 hours a day. I/S
departments must preserve, protect, and make critical data available through
regular, managed backup. Tape drives, tape drive technology, and storage
management software applications have evolved over the decades as the
cost-effective means for backup, near on-line, and archival storage. Automation
provides the best solution for optimal storage management, combining consistent
backup with the capacity and performance requirements that exceed a stand-alone
drive solution.
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<font face="Helvetica, Arial"><b>INFORMATION MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES</b></font>
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The enterprise today has become an almost living organism with scarcely any down
or dormant time. With activity taking place internationally, the luxury of lengthy
time periods to perform backup of critical information no longer exists. I/S
departments find less and less time available, and more and more information that
must be protected. Stand-alone tape drives cannot support even mid-sized networks,
and no I/S department has sufficient personnel to assign to the labor intensive
task of swapping out tapes, even when each individual tape is of significant capacity.
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Just how big is the data management challenge? It continues to expand with the
explosive growth of client/server environments and the adoption of enterprise-wide
applications such as SAP/R3, PeopleSoft, BAAN, Oracle, and CIS. With the
proliferation of NT and Unix servers supporting these applications, the amount of
data requiring management soars. Estimates are that by the year 2001, there will
be 245,000 terabytes of information requiring storage on Unix systems, 350,000
terabytes on NT systems. In fact, the amount of data stored is growing by 50 to
100% per year. Only automated tape storage systems can provide cost-effective data
storage services to support the volume of resulting mission-critical information.
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<font face="Helvetica, Arial"><b>STORAGE AUTOMATION OPTIONS – STACKERS, AUTOLOADERS, LIBRARIES</b></font>
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Tape storage automation is the combining of robotics with tape drives and
complementary software resulting in a device that can load, unload, and swap tapes
without operator intervention. The primary differences among tape automation
systems are in the way they handle data backup and access management.
<p>
<table align="RIGHT" border="0" width="320" cellpadding="2"><tr><td>[[File:8-2.gif]]</td></tr><tr><td><font size="-2" face="Helvetica, Arial">"Typical" DLT Drive-Based Library Design shows DLT drives, robotic cartridge handling system, DLTtape cartridges, and controller mechanism</font></td></tr></table>Systems referred to as <b>stackers</b> are the first and simplest level of automated systems, providing support for small-scale I/S operations. Stackers typically are single drive configurations; tapes are inserted and removed in sequential order by the system's robotic picker. For a stacker to backup a database, the system would begin with tape 0 and continue inserting and removing tapes until the backup
was complete or the system ran out of available cartridges.
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<b><i>Autoloaders</i></b> are automated systems that also have a single drive but
have the ability to provide any of their tapes upon request. This random selection
feature allows autoloader systems to support more sophisticated applications such
as small-scale network backup and restore or near on-line storage.
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<b><i>Libraries</i></b> offer functionality similar to autoloaders, but boast
multiple tape drives and the ability to support larger scale backups, near on-line
access, user-initiated file recovery and simultaneous support of multiple users
and hosts. Libraries are more complex than stackers or autoloaders; typical
library components include:
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<ul>
<li><b>The ability to accommodate two or more tape drives</b> – The
capabilities of the tape drive(s) selected as the heart of the library determine,
typically, the performance, capacity, throughput, reliability, data compression,
compatibility, and media consumption.
<li><b>Robotic loader mechanism</b> – The robotic mechanism performs the
movement of the tapes to and from the drive(s) within the library.
<li><b>Library and loader controllers</b> – Libraries contain separate
controllers to oversee overall library activity and robotic movement. These
controllers carry the intelligence to perform the activities requested by the host.
<li><b>Bar code reader</b> – The bar code reader enables the host software to
track the location of files in and outside of the library. A bar code reader also
accelerates the library file inventory process, eliminating the need to read the
header of each tape in a library.
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<font face="Helvetica, Arial"><b>BENEFITS OF AUTOMATED STORAGE SYSTEMS</b></font>
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Automated tape systems provide room to keep up with the explosive growth of data.
Their unmatched capacities and bandwidth coupled with the investment protection
of scalability, make them the storage solution of choice.
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Since the precision robotics of automated tape systems are responsible for loading
and unloading tape cartridges, human intervention (the greatest single cause of
data loss) is minimized. Human administration of the entire storage process is
reduced, preventing errors caused by those types of activities. The result is less
downtime in tape backup and data restoration: data protection occurs consistently
and automatically.
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As storage management costs fall, the cost effectiveness of automated tape storage
systems increases and the return on investment accelerates. Guaranteed media
rotation and storage management, improved data security and availability, and
seamless disaster recovery are benefits of this class of storage system.
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Multi-drive automation systems bring additional benefits. As the window of time to
back up I/S systems shrinks, the increased bandwidth of multiple drives in an
automated system allows data to be backed up much more quickly. Concurrent
operations such as off-line copying and simultaneous backup and/or restoration can
occur, and multi-host data transfer is supported, all with a significant level of
redundancy and fault tolerance.
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<font face="Helvetica, Arial"><b>STORAGE AUTOMATION APPLICATIONS</b></font>
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As with stand-alone tape drives, the primary application for automated tape
systems is backup/archiving. In addition to providing the only practical solution
to managing the sheer volume of data across networks, automated systems maximize
data integrity by removing the human element from the backup process. An incorrect
tape cannot be loaded, a scheduled backup cycle cannot be forgotten. I/S personnel
are free to perform other, more valuable tasks: automation reduces the
administrative cost of mounting tape cartridges, estimated at over one dollar per
cartridge.
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Automated tape storage systems also play a key role in Hierarchical Storage
Management (HSM). HSM is a storage strategy that places data on different types of
storage media depending on how frequently the information is accessed:
high-demand data is placed on fast disk, while data that is lower in demand can be
stored on slower or cheaper media such as optical disk or tape. Managing data
storage across media types is a complex application, but when implemented properly
can reduce the total cost of storage and storage management. An effective HSM
implementation can increase the total amount of storage that can be managed in a
single installation, as well as presenting to the user the illusion of infinite
disk space.
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Other applications for tape automation systems include near-online storage,
information archiving, data collection, remote vaulting (critical for disaster
recovery), tape arrays, and image and video storage and distribution.
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<font face="Helvetica, Arial"><b>CASE-STUDY GLIMPSE: COST OF OWNERSHIP OF AUTOMATED TAPE STORAGE SYSTEM IMPRESSES PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRM</b></font>
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Faced with the challenge of implementing a backup solution for its distributed server network, a professional services firm reviewed a number of backup solutions and selected automated library systems built around the
Quantum DLT 4000 tape drive.
"We didn't want to buy a large juke box solution," said the project manager, "because it would be too expensive, given the number of servers we need to support." He saw this library as the most cost effective solution with the best combination of capacity, performance, and cost per gigabyte. He also felt the DLT-based solution was the easiest to use. "With a single DLTtape cartridge, we can back up as much as 40 gigabytes. That's a good match for our disk configurations."
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This customer's business is supported by a network of seven Infrastructure Hub sites built around over 300 COMPAQ servers: hub servers, mail servers, and application servers. Hub servers support user accessible databases; mail servers store personal E-mail files; and application servers support individual applications. At each of the seven hub locations there are two hub servers and multiple E-mail servers. Each is supported by a tape storage library. In total, there are nearly a hundred of these libraries at the server.
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All incremental data on the servers is backed up on the tape storage libraries on a daily basis. These backups mean that, even if there is a breakdown in the system and data or personal mail files are lost, the user is assured that he or she can go back to yesterday's backup and re-access personal E-mail files.
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The project manager states that in this demanding backup environment, tape storage libraries with DLTtape system technology provide an effective solution, combining capacity, economy, and reliability. "The DLT libraries have greater capacity than DAT tape, they cost a lot less than big data-center-type juke boxes, and our experience indicates that we will have no reliability issues with the DLT libraries."
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Through deployment of automated DLTtape storage systems, this customer increased the security of data and obtained labor cost savings, while establishing a reliable backup regimen for a sizable, complex installation.
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As the amount of data needing management and storage continues to expand and the window of time available to perform backup of data shrinks, automated tape storage systems offer the cost-effective, reliable solution.
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=See Also=
* [[Quantum Corporation]]
[[Category:Computing]]