VTL: Key Tool for Shifting Tape Backups to Disk

Mike DiMeglio is product marketing manager at FalconStor Software, which provides data protection and storage solutions that facilitate the continuous availability of business-critical data.

MDiMeglio

"Backup" and "pain" are two terms that are almost synonymous in the minds of corporations relying on tape-based data protection. In a world moving quickly towards the virtual, tape is becoming an incongruity. In addition to its inability to deliver on-the-spot data recovery, tape demands a backup process that taxes the CPU and network resources already allocated in a virtualized environment, making a lengthy process even slower.

And the fallibility of tape has been well documented; most recent studies have found that only 60-80 percent of all backups to tape complete successfully. However, the reasons for moving away from tape stem from other problems, as well. Among the factors influencing the mass migration from tape are:

That last point has become particularly compelling for many enterprises. IT managers need a solution that not only meets backup and recovery needs, but also can function across multiple operating systems, protect virtual and physical servers, operate within the existing infrastructure and remain compatible with future technologies.

The expectations for backup solutions in the virtual environment are many. Among the most pressing are:

Disk, of course, is faster and more reliable than tape, but there are several approaches to disk from which to choose. A virtual tape library (VTL) poses the best option for many companies looking to shift their virtual environments to disk-based backup.

VTL is a data storage virtualization technology that presents hard disk drives (HDDs) as physical tape libraries. To the backup software, the VTL appears to possess all of the characteristics of a physical tape library including tape drives and tape cartridges. This enables the backup software to manage the VTL as it would a physical tape library since it views a VTL in the same way.

The benefits of the VTL approach include:

There are numerous elements enterprises might adopt as they mature their virtualization efforts and improve their approaches to data protection. VTL is an effective bridge at the outset of that journey toward disk-based data protection systems. It relieves much of the pain caused by traditional tape-based backup while maximizing existing and future data investments.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.