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Virtual Tape Library

Cost-effective solution that uses disk to enhance the reliability, speed, and availability of backups. Provides comprehensive data protection for both SAN and DAS environments, facilitating backups to virtual tape in the traditional tape backup model while also providing the ability to perform continuous disk-based backups.

With today’s dwindling IT budgets, administrators and other IT professionals are aggressively searching for ways to maximize investments in their existing storage infrastructure. This fact, coupled with shrinking backup windows, and escalating data growth, and the growing need for a cost effective, reliable, business continuity solution are pushing the limits of internal resources.

There is a solution: Storage Engine’s unique VirtualTape Library (VTL) solution consolidates the management of backup resources while enhancing the reliability of backup operations and accelerating the speed of recovery. Storage Engine VTL leverages industry standard high speed disk to provision virtual tape drives and libraries to backup servers attached to an iSCSI/IP or Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN), without the need to change existing backup software configurations and therefore preserving the investment in backup policy and IT staff’s operating knowledge.

Why Storage Engine VTL? Real business benefits...

"If running backups is getting the best of you, don’t miss Storage Engine VTL ..."

—(source InfoWorld article)


"....[W]orking with the Storage Engine VTL solution is just like working with a real tape library - only better... VTL is up to four times faster than backing up to tape, and a selective restore can be orders of magnitude faster."

—Enterprise Storage Group Labs, following hands-on testing of Storage Engine VTL


"...[I]t was no surprise that three... vendors had chosen Storage Engine's VirtualTape Library to power their appliances. Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Storage Engine has hit a home run."

—(source Storage Pipeline article)

 

Reliability

 

Ensures backup/restore success by eliminating media/ mechanical errors and manual intervention


Availability

 

Remote offsite replication of virtual tapes provides disaster protection


Consolidation

 

Centralizes management & consolidates backup resources


Speed

 

Rapid data recovery

 

Support for multiple concurrent sessions

 

Disk-to-disk is faster than traditional tape backup


Archiving

 

Data export to tape for archiving purposes


Fast Deployment

 

Integrates seamlessly with existing backup software or policy

 

Easy to deploy — comparable to adding a new tape drive or library to your environment


Storage Engine VTL Maximizes Backup Performance and Reliability

Storage Engine VTL increases the speed and reliability of existing third party backup applications by using disks to emulate industry standard tape libraries.

Storage Engine VTL leverages the Fibre Channel (FC) or IP protocol to transfer data to and restore data from disk-based virtual tape at ultra high speeds. And, Storage Engine VTL maximizes reliability, and improves backup and restore success rate, by eliminating robotic mechanical failures and physical tape media errors.

Reliability is a critical IT concern, and with Storage Engine’s VTL solution, users can perform storage controller-aware I/O load balancing, and leverage the transparent failover and fail-back capabilities of a vast array of intelligent storage systems. Users also have the ability to configure two VTL appliances as an active-active cluster to maximize service availability.

Storage Engine VTL Reduces Material and Administrative Costs of Backup and Restore

Adding to the Storage Engine VTL’s inherent ability to aggregate and provision backup resources, as well as virtual tape drives/libraries over FC or IP SAN, this unique solution offers a new level of centralized management via the IP-based delta replication option, which replicates a virtual tape cartridge over IP in a peer-to-peer or many-to-one configuration, based on policy. Storage Engine VTL significantly reduces the administrative burden placed on IT managers and staff by empowering users to initiate full disk or file recovery through rollback or mounted snapshots. Storage Engine VTL also eliminates the need to rely on a library sharing option to coordinate access to a FC tape drive/library.

Storage Engine VTL Delivers Seamless Integration

Storage Engine’s ongoing interoperability testing with leading hardware and software solutions ensures seamless integration of VTL into an existing IT environment, while optimizing the overall performance and functionality of VTL and other technologies used by Storage Engine customers today.


TCO and ROI Benefits

Minimizes Total Cost of Ownership

  • Centralizes the provisioning of disk-based virtual tape drives/libraries over Fibre Channel (FC) or IP
  • Facilitates tape vaulting via IP-based replication
  • Seamlessly integrates into an existing backup infrastructure
  • Simplifies backup consolidation via peer-to-peer replication
  • Provides plug & play installation with existing backup servers without reconfiguration
  • Allows Administrators to use the NDMP Protocol to protect NAS appliances


Maximizes Performance and Return on Investment

  • Leverages FC and IP SAN to enable backup software to transfer data to/from a disk-based virtual tape at ultra high speeds
  • Eliminates media/mechanical failure during backup/restore operations
  • Maximizes service availability via active-active cluster configuration
  • Leverages failover and fail-back capabilities of industry leading intelligent storage controllers for maximum availability and reliability
  • SAN-based virtual tape enables third party backup software to rapidly restore data and reduce downtime
  • Optimizes investment and utilization of existing backup environment

This product is covered by Patent No. 6,715,098 and other pending applications.