Neartek's Virtual Storage Engine Certified for Use with iSeries

by Alex Woodie

Now iSeries shops looking to replace their tape-based backups with a new disk-to-disk, or a disk-to-disk-to-tape, back-up solution may want to check out Neartek's Virtual Storage Engine. VSE2 was granted TotalStorage Proven certification from IBM for its eServer range last month. With its capability to emulate practically any type of tape drive, as well as wide cross-platform support, the VSE2 software is designed to speed back-up times while reducing costs in heterogeneous IT environments.

New federal laws like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley are driving the need for information lifecycle management policies at many companies these days. Neartek says VSE2 can assist with a company's ILM policy by effectively masking the complexity of tape protocols and resolving interoperability issues between host and storage peripherals.

VSE2 works by tricking the host into thinking it is still backing up to a tape drive, when in fact the VSE2 software, running on a Windows-based server appliance, is merely emulating the tape drive. Instead of backing up to tape, VSE2 stores the data in disk cache, which can make backups run much faster. Depending on how the user has configured VSE2, the software moves the data among the primary, secondary, and archival storage devices--and back, if necessary. With the capability to backup several servers simultaneously, and support for "volume stacking" on the tapes themselves, VSE2 can help maximize a company's available bandwidth and backup resources.

VSE2 emulates a wide variety of tape drives, including Exabyte Mammoth 1 and 2; IBM 3590; LTO 1 and LTO 2; Quantum DLT4000, DLT7000, DLT8000, and SDLT; StorageTek 9840; and Sony SDX500. The underlying Windows-based appliance that VSE2 runs on can use ATA, SCSI, or Fibre Channel disks from EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, or StorageTek.

VSE2 supports OS/400 V4R2 and later versions, z/OS, AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, Windows, MPX/ie (HP3000), Unisys IX, NonStop, and GCOS 8 (Bull mainframe; VSE2 was initially developed in mid-1990s to support the Bull mainframe, before Neartek saw the value in widening its scope. Companies can use several major backup utilities with VSE2, including those from Atempo TimeNavigator, Computer Associates' BrightStor, EMC Legato's NetWorker, HP's OmniStorage, IBM Tivoli's Storage Manager, and VERITAS Software's NetBackup. For OS/400, Neartek says it uses IBM's BRMS, although there shouldn't be any reason why it wouldn't also work with other major OS/400 backup utilities, including Help/Systems' Robot/Save and LXI's MMS.

Neartek first brought OS/400 support to VSE2 in April of 2002. Since then the company says it has helped several iSeries shops to implement virtual tape solutions. One of those customers is CS Communication & Systemes, a large French company that provides systems integration and outsourcing services to companies with technical and scientific computer workloads. CS runs many different computer systems for its customers, including IBM and Bull mainframes, VAX machines, OS/400 servers, Windows NT, and Unix servers, according to a case study supplied by Neartek. However, the backup situation at CS was getting a little out of hand, as the company was using platform-specific backup systems for each platform, and there were nearly as many tape libraries as there were servers. Ten different types of magnetic media were used every day.

According to Neartek, CS chose the VSE2 solution because it was the only virtual tape library solution that supported OS/400. By enabling CS to connect any of the servers to all of the inhouse tape libraries, CS found dramatic savings in time and tape use. First, CS realized a 30 percent reduction in backup times, according to Neartek. It also cut its daily tape use from 14 to one, which, at about $130 per tape, helps the company to save $80,000 to $90,000 per year in media costs. Finally, CS was able to reduce its backup operator staff from two to three people down to one person.

Other companies offering storage virtualization products for the iSeries include EVault, FalconStor, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers.