Gaining efficiencies through virtualizing your physical tape environment

Virtualization is not new to data centers; however, it has been gaining mainstream status as many of the older mainframe and Unix principles are being applied to x86/x64 environments. Moreover, a primary goal of virtualization is to achieve higher hardware utilization and operational flexibility, thus creating better operating and environmental efficiencies through pooling of assets in a shared environment. Tape virtualization has also evolved from its initial mainframe data-set-stacking capability; however, for the most part, solutions continue to be platform/domain (silo)-centric, mitigating the creation of a fully shared tape environment. The Fujitsu Siemens CentricStor tape virtualization solution addresses the full virtualization of the data center tape environment, leveraging and optimizing current/future tape assets and creating a highly available, shared, non-intrusive tape environment that is fully supportive of information life management (ILM) initiatives. This document looks at the product's capabilities, data center benefits, and potential future enhancements.