Tuesday Aug 25, 2009
Tuesday Aug 25, 2009
One of the complaints I read and hear about in a mainframe tape environment is the time it takes to backup all of your disk data to tape. Mainframe tape backup applications have been known to have small block sizes and have not leveraged the speed of the latest FICON channel types. However, there have been numerous technologies that have come along to speed up tape backup processing. Tape originally became a part of the storage hierarchy in 1952 when it was the primary storage device. Did you know that disk was invented four years after tape in 1956? Also, it was in 1998 that virtual tape solutions came to market. Since 1998 there have been significant technological advancements that have enabled the acceleration of tape backups both from a hardware and software perspective.
If you wanted, you could eliminate tapes from your environment completely. However, there are potential risks involved in the elimination of tape that go along with an increased total cost of ownership. I have written often about the need to have a balance of storage device types to support a tiered storage strategy and that tape is a critical part of the whole. You can refresh your memory by reading a few of the following blog entries:
One solution that I have not written about previously is Sun's Extended High Performance Data Mover (ExHPDM). By interleaving many backup streams into one, ExHPDM enables full utilization of
- high-speed channels,
- high-speed high-capacity tape drives,
- high capacity media, and
- high-capacity, high-speed disk subsystems.
In a structured benchmark, Sun was able to decrease the elapsed time for disk backup by up to 11 times with Sun's latest 1TB T10000B tape drive technology. This software solution will benefit both Sun and IBM enterprise tape drives.
If you would like to learn more about ExHPDM and how you can backup your data at maximum speed, read the latest white paper regarding the benchmark and contact your Sun Storage Representative.
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