Pull Your VTLs Out of Their Administrative Silos

It's no secret that disk is the predominant method used for storage in the backup and recovery space. With the cost of storage going down precipitously, disk based backups have certainly become the norm.

Even with the popularity of disk-based backups on the increase, there is a subset of workloads that unfortunately can't use this as an effective storage target due to a number of reasons. This led to many organizations adopting VTL’s or virtual tape libraries to bridge the technology gap. VTL’s have effectively enabled them to use disk-based storage for their backups by virtualizing a tape layer in front of the storage. Some of the advantages are obvious, such as faster backup and recovery times. Other  benefits, such as deduplication, encryption, and even replication, are features of virtual tape libraries that also differentiate them from traditional tape.

VTL’s have solved some legacy challenges with tape but they have created problems of their own

• VTLs lack backup and policy management capabilities.
• They have no awareness of backup infrastructure or operations.
• They don’t offer automation or analysis of backup operations.
• They typically operate outside the overall backup infrastructure, which places an additional administrative and management burden on IT teams.
• They lack cloud integration and awareness and can’t be delivered through a SaaS model.
• Many storage vendors are discontinuing their VTL lines
• They add additional maintenance streams to the data protection landscape
• They create isolated silo’s of data and decrease overall storage efficiency in an enterprise data protection solution

Organizations have had to compromise when they have environments that require writing backups to tape. The compromise is that they have to either manage and maintain their aging tape infrastructure, or they use VTL’s which give them a sense of modernization, but with that modernization comes all of the shortcomings mentioned above. But with the all of the advancements in technology, should you have to compromise?

Well, we at Cobalt Iron don’t think so! We understand the broad set of complexities in the data protection landscape, and we aim to solve as many of them as we can. We heard loud and clear the challenges around VTL usage and knew there needed to be a more innovative approach. We don't believe that architecture and infrastructure should be an inhibitor of effective management of data protection operations.

Cobalt Iron offers a powerful VTL capability, complete with multitenancy features, in the Compass enterprise SaaS backup solution

With the VTL feature, the Compass Accelerator is the first enterprise SaaS backup solution to provide a completely integrated VTL feature, allowing true data protection consolidation across an enterprise. This powerful VTL feature is also capable of multitenancy at tape ingest, enabling robust and secure sharing and segregation of VTL backups in even the most complex environments. The software-enabled Compass Data Protection Acquisition Tool (DPAT) emulates tape and answers tape library, tape drive, and tape volume commands just as a physical or virtual tape library would. With Compass VTL, organizations can deploy a single, unified solution that unleashes data from traditional physical and virtual tape data silos, all while modernizing environments that require tape resources for backup and recovery.

Here are the key features of the Compass VTL multitenancy solution:

• Automates tape and VTL operations and integrates them completely with other enterprise backup solutions, while maintaining multitenancy operational discipline.
• Fully integrates comprehensive multitenancy capabilities with enterprise backup operations to allow for the secure and efficient sharing of resources.
• Takes VTL and tape workloads to new levels of operational simplicity with reduced overall costs and secure multitenancy.
• Supports automatic replication to another Compass Accelerator in a private or public cloud environment.
• Integrates tape and VTL operations into data center and cloud services.
• Delivered in a SaaS model, with Fibre Channel connectivity on certified platforms including IBM Power AIX, IBM i, Windows on Intel, Linux on Intel, and HPE OpenVMS.
• Provides data encryption both in-flight and at-rest.
• Reduces backup times and improves recovery point objectives (RPOs).
• Proactively manages, monitors, and maintains the environment and provides the renowned analytics of Compass.

Are you ready to modernize and automate your physical and virtual tape environments?

For our customers with legacy backup hardware and appliances nearing their end of life, Compass is the ideal solution. With its industry-first VTL multitenancy capabilities, Compass can help remove hardware to reduce costs, negate the operational complexities of tape through automation, and impose data and operational discipline through full multitenancy.

Ready to hear more? Download the Compass VTL data sheet here.