The IBM TotalStorage Virtual Tape Server Model B10 (B10 VTS) is designed to enhance performance and provide the capacity required for today’s backup requirements. The B10 VTS can help reduce batch processing time, total cost of ownership and storage management overhead. A larger portion of a company’s data storage may be automated in a shorter period of time.

The B10 VTS has been designed to reduce or eliminate the number of bottlenecks in a given tape environment, depending on the characteristics of installed equipment and processor workloads. For example, if more drives are needed, up to 64 virtual drives may be configured to meet this need. If cartridge capacity is not fully utilized, the B10 VTS can alleviate this problem by filling the physical cartridge.

The B10 VTS initially creates a virtual volume in a buffer known as the Tape Volume Cache (TVC), a RAID-5 disk array. If these virtual volumes are rereferenced, they are accessed in most instances from the TVC, helping to eliminate many of the physical delays associated with tape I/O and improving the performance of the tape process.

The virtual volume is also written to an attached IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape System 3590 as a logical volume. A copy of the virtual volume remains in the cache, which may provide fast access to critical data.

A VTS provides a high degree of automated storage management capabilities. Migration and reclamation functions are dynamically processed whenever VTS internal thresholds are met and necessary resources like two idle Enterprise Tape Drives are available.

Optional Advanced Function and Advanced Policy Management features are available to optimize the storage management for specific needs.

• The cache residency time of selected virtual volumes may optionally be preferred over others using DFSMS
• A cache management option offers immediate deletion of selected virtual volumes after pre-migration to optimize fast read access to data
• The Volume Pooling option enables groups of selected logical volumes. This options allows different applications or customer sets to be grouped on physically separated groups of stacked volumes
• Selected logical volumes may automatically be duplicated and stored on different physical cartridges to protect data from media failures
• Import/Export enables volumes to be moved for disaster recovery, workload balancing or volume archiving. Exported stacked volumes may be imported on another VTS Model B10 or B20

Virtual drives can be dedicated to a specific processor or shared in supported environments. This flexibility maximizes the efficiency of data transfer operations by allocating sufficient drives for a specific task.

The B10 VTS may be attached to IBM and non-IBM servers using FICON, ESCON, SCSI and Storage Area Network (SAN) connections. A VTS can be supported at distances of up to 100km using channel directors or switches. Even greater distances are supported with WAN or ATM connections

Peer-to-Peer Copy
Two B10 VTSs can be coupled to participate in an IBM TotalStorage Peer-to-Peer Virtual Tape Server (PtP VTS) environment. The PtP VTS design helps to avoid single points of failure and improves data availability. The PtP architecture allows physical separation of components in two sites to enhance disaster recovery.
 

(2) Lists the minimum software level requirements for the basic VTS support. Please refer to the technical documentation for specific function or feature support.