Re: VTL Was: Long SAVSYS

All my answers are using the SPHiNX from Crossroads Systems but I believe they extend to other VTLs as well.




Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On 4/23/2013 9:02 AM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Part of my concern about a VTL is can it be used as a alternate IPL
device? If not, can it at least be used as an alternate installation
device?

It looks like a 3584 fibre attached tape library so it does not change that answer for a VTL vs. Tape.

Do you consider two VTL's, a county apart, a complete solution? Our
primary site is in one county, our HA site (which you've visited) is in
the next.

Two VTL units separated sufficiently to ensure you don't loose both. In your case your Executive Management has decided that a county away is sufficient. One of my customers has a facility that is Bomb/Tornado proof (a relic of the cold war) with its own power supply so they put theirs in the next room. All up the user to determine.

Are you totally done with tapes then?

Except as needed for Archival purposes yes, physical tape goes away. Some folks will create a Mylar (tape) copy to keep in an offsite vault, other don't see the need. Up to Executive Management and Corporate Council what should be saved.

What about the requests for saving this library off to tape and then
delete it from the system? And save the tape indefinitely?

Note: We also use Iron Mountain.


Again an Archival question

We have multiple lpars saving to the same tape library via fiber SAN. Is
this supported?

Yes

Our largest consumer of tapes is our one Linux lpar. We have three of the
six drives, and half of the 100+ slots, in our tape library dedicated to
that. The sole purpose of this lpar is to run TSM (Tivoli Storage
Manager). Does TSM play well with VTL's? TSM is used to back up PC's and
related servers.


Again, it looks like a 3584 fibre attached tape library so it does not change that answer for a VTL vs. Tape.

I assume that BRMS plays well with VTL's, right?

Yep - do it every day.

Rob Berendt
-- IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1 Group Dekko Dept 1600 Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive Garrett, IN 46738 Ship to: Dock 108 6928N 400E Kendallville, IN 46755 http://www.dekko.com