Virtual tape takes on disaster recovery

摘要

When virtual tape arrived on the scene a few years ago, many storage managers dismissed it as a niche product not stur-dy enough for enterprise-class backups. Now this New Data Center technology, which mimics a tape backup library but uses disks as the medium, is proving itself in ever-larger organizations. Consider CitiStreet. The joint venture between financial giants Citigroup and State Street is one of the nation's largest insurance benefits delivery providers and retirement-plan record keepers; the company reports servicing more than 9 million plan participants. CitiStreet, based in Quincy, Mass., has used a 35TB Sepaton S2100-ES2 virtual tape library in its Jacksonville, Fla., data center for more than a year, and is installing a 40TB unit in its Quincy data center. By July, that VTL will be operational and the company will retire its two aging Quantum ATL tape library units, which contain four DLT 7000 tape drives each, says Jeff Machols, systems integration manager for CitiStreet. At that time, the VTL willlet the two data centers provide speedy disaster recovery for each other. Machols recently discussed CitiStreet's storage plans with Network World Executive Editor Julie Bort.