Mixed media libraries make economic sense: how it's done is the differentiator - Automated Storage Management

Computer Technology Review, Sept, 2002 by Christine Taylor Chudnow

StorageTek sees end-user customers wanting to try out drive types, for example deciding between DLT and LTO. Market confusion surrounding the drive types became less important when customers could run both in the same library. Stewart said, "It's that flexibility and investment protection that is the primary driver." In StorageTek's technology, drives and cartridges form one large matrix that can manage sub-matrixes. The library identifies and labels its cartridges and types, then maps them to particular drives. When the library receives a media request from an application, it mounts the appropriate cartridge to the correct drive. This happens regardless of the backup application's capabilities: If the backup application can intelligently choose its own tape drives, there is no conflict, but if not, the library can do it at its own level.

Mark Lewis, StorageTek senior product marketing manager says that although S torageTek offers advanced virtual partition capability, using virtual partitions for mixed media is awkward and time consuming. IT administrators must manually reallocate data between partitions as the drive types and media change. "You don't have to think about that. If you have extra slots and capability, they're dynamically allocated back and forth," he said. Dispensing with partition balancing makes handling mixed media a simpler exercise.

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