Fujitsu Siemens Adds OS/400 Support to Virtual Tape Library

by Alex Woodie

Fujitsu Siemens Computers last week announced that it has added OS/400 support to its CentricStor virtual tape library. The disk-based server appliance can back a variety of different servers by emulating their tape library over a storage area network (SAN). The appliance has been sold in Europe since 2000 and was introduced to the U.S. market for the first time in June.

The CentricStor line of rack-mounted virtual tape appliances is one of the new generation of "disk to disk" backup appliances that are gaining favor in data centers. Many organizations are opting to perform their primary backups directly to disk, which writes considerably faster than tape and can significantly reduce backup times. After a one-time setup to define the resources available to CentricStor, administrators simply point their applications to the CentricStor appliance and run their backups just like they always have.

During a CentricStor backup, the application doesn't know it's being backed up to disk because CentricStor acts just like the tape library used before, except that backups run much faster. After performing the backup to disk on the front end, CentricStor offloads the data to a tape library attached on the back end of the virtual tape appliance. CentricStor can also hold the backed up data on its RAID 5-protected SCSI disk array for a specified amount of time, allowing users to quickly perform restores. Restores from physical tape may take longer because data must first be reloaded into the disk cache.

CentricStor is a good solution for organizations that would like to increase the number of tape drives to speed backups, while consolidating back-end tape libraries, says Mike Holland, vice president and general manager at Colorado-based PeakData, Fujitsu Siemens' newly appointed master reseller of CentricStor in the United States.

"CentricStor can very easily double the number of tape drives a back-end application sees, while reducing the actual number of tape drives by half," Holland says. "And because we've decoupled the physical recording technology, we're able to deploy new technology." For example, when LTO 3 debuts, later this year, CentricStor customers will be able to incorporate it into their backup routines without having to deploy a new tape library or making any changes to the host application, he says.

The virtualization technology in CentricStor allows it to make 512 virtual tape drives available to applications, along with hundreds of thousands of virtual tape cartridges. Meanwhile, on the back end, anywhere from four to 16 Fibre Channel-connected tape drives, or up to 32 SCSI-connected tape drives, can be spread across up to eight libraries, where hundreds or thousands of physical cartridges sit. Throughput ranges from 300 MB/sec on the low-end Model 100 box, to 1.6 GB/sec on larger boxes.

Tape technologies supported by CentricStor include IBM's 3590 and 3592 Magstar, StorageTek's 9840 Magstar clones, and the LTO line of tape drives. Customer must have a tape library to connect to CentricStor, and supported tape libraries include IBM 3494; L180, L700, L5500, PowderHorn 9310, and TimberWorld 9740; ADIC Scalar 1000, Scalar i2000, Scalar 10K, AML/J, AML/E, and AML/2; and Fujitsu Siemens Scalar 100 and 3560.

Holland says PeakData has a lot of large customers with AS/400s that are looking to consolidate their backup operations, which is often their most expensive manual IT process. On OS/400, CentricStor emulates the IBM 3590 Magstar drive. A CentricStor implementation at an OS/400 shop includes implementation of storage middleware developed by MP Consulting; Holland says this is part of the solution offered by PeakData.

Adding support for OS/400 completes Fujitsu Siemens' goal of supporting all major platforms, said Dr. Helmut Beck, vice president of storage at the German-Japanese computer manufacturer. "With the support of OS/400, we follow our long-term strategy in supporting all major platforms with our virtual tape technology," he said. Today, the CentricStor supports OS/400, OS/390, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Reliant-Unix, Linux, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, GCOS 8, and BS2000 operating systems.

CentricStor includes its own graphical interface, called the Global eXtended Tape Control Center, and works with the major open-systems backup utilities, including those from IBM's Tivoli business unit, LEGATO, and VERITAS. In the OS/400 world, CentricStor backups can be controlled from OS/400's BRMS utility, or from either of the third-party products available, Help/Systems Robot/SAVE or LXI's MMS.

More than 100 customers in 11 countries, primarily in Europe, have adopted CentricStor. The devices were launched in Japan in 2003. This June, Fujitsu Siemens announced the partnership with PeakData, of Niwot, Colorado, to spearhead the American introduction of CentricStor. The companies have since launched the www.centricstorusa.com Web site.

Pricing for CentricStor starts at about $200,000.