Tape virtualisation optimises backup and recovery

For many IT departments, the number one storage pain point is backup and recovery.

• 70 per cent of all storage costs - estimated $6,000 per terabyte per year - are consumed on backup and recovery
• Up to 20 per cent of all nightly backup jobs fail, or cannot be recovered

Traditional tape management is labour intensive and compliance requirements today are increasingly complex.

These issues, unless properly addressed, can place your data and your business at risk.

Tape virtualisation: the next step

Tape virtualisation allows you to consolidate your storage resources, address backup and recovery issues, and simplify tape management complexity. It involves:

• Real-time disk-to-disk backup and recovery
• Independent, asynchronous transfer of backup data to tape

For example, in many organisations today, data is backed up from servers in real time to a disk-based backup system. Since most recovery requests occur within 48 hours of a file being deleted or changed, the vast majority of recovery operations can be performed from disk instead of tape.

With tape virtualisation, data is retained on disk for a period set by policy before being archived to tape, allowing you to dynamically move data from an expensive tier to a less expensive tier and vice versa.

This flexibility lets you take advantage of the cost savings of using the right technology at the right time for the right data. Tape virtualisation also allows you to do your bit for the environment as it is more power efficient and generates little to no heat.

Who is using tape virtualisation?

A recent survey of 228 IT professionals in North America by the Enterprise Strategy Group found almost 30 per cent of respondents had already implemented tape virtualisation and another third planned to in the next two years.

The majority of respondents believed it had helped or would help them meet or exceed backup and recovery objectives.

Sun's Virtual Tape Library - more intelligent backups

Sun offers a range of Virtual Tape Library (VTL) storage solutions to suit businesses of all sizes and requirements.

Its 100+ TB disk buffers and high throughput accelerate your existing backup and recovery applications, including Veritas, Legato, Tivoli, and Computer Associates.

Sun has a range of VTL offerings that provide the following benefits:

• Faster backups -

  data is backed up to disk, allowing for shorter backup windows and avoiding the inefficiencies and slow transfer rates of tape drives

• Faster recovery -

  most recovery operations are from disk and can be completed immediately without having to find and load the relevant tape

• Higher success rate -

  the intermediate disk layer ensures tape backups are successful

• Less human intervention -

  data is automatically archived to tape based on storage management policies. Tape management can also be automated.

• Reduced infrastructure costs -

  backups can be consolidated into a single disk-based virtual tape library and a single physical tape library

Find out more

» Find out more about Sun's Virtualisation Storage Solutions

» Read about the features and specs of Sun's Virtual Tape Library

» Use our IM3 diagnostic tool to benchmark your organisation's storage management practices against 1,000 other companies

» Read what Sun storage guru Nigel Dessau has to say about storage virtualisation in his blog