Virtual TapeServer 6.03.41 Installation Guide

Introduction | 3
Overview of features
The following VTS features enable you to simplify and streamline tape operations, reduce
costs for storage, automate backup and restore operations, and increase flexibility in
managing backed-up data:
• Flexible and extendable, enabling you to create any number of virtual tape pools that
“contain” any number of virtual tapes
• Compatibility with Backup, Restore, and TMF
• Compatibility with Mediacom and DSM/TC
• Support for the following Backup Management Applications (BMAs):
• IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (version 5.3 and above)
• Symantec Veritas NetBackup (version 4.5 and above)
• Syncsort Backup Express (version 2.15D and above)
• EMC Legato Networker (version 6.2 or above)
The heart of VTS is a middleware tape emulation engine that is deployed on HP ProLiant
servers. This combination emulates tape storage to HP NonStop servers and provides backup
storage for the data on industry standard, low-cost disk arrays. Data stored in VTS can later
be copied to real tape media for archival storage or disaster recovery if long-term backup
copies are required. The advantages of this approach include the following:
• Access to data in VTS is almost immediate, and there is no tape to mount or rewind and
no searching through tape volumes for data files.
• If additional tape storage is needed, you can create virtual tapes using the VTS web
interface without involving the NonStop server. Tapes created on VTS are identical to
those made by the application directly and can be read on any NonStop server, including
sites without VTS.
• VTS allows multiple hosts to perform up to 16 simultaneous backups per VTS server.
• Worldwide service is available from Hewlett-Packard.