Fibre Channel Archives

StarWind Hooks VTL to IBM i

March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops that are looking to add a virtual tape library (VTL) to their IT mix may want to check out StarWind, a Rocket Division Software spin-off that provides a range of storage virtualization and software-defined storage offerings. The company recently added support for IBM i with its VTL solution, opening up a new market for itself in the midrange.

StarWind bills itself as a provider of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions for the enterprise remote office/branch office (ROBO), small and midsize business (SMB), and the edge. The company, which began in 2008 as a spin-off from Rocket Division Software …
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Data De-Dupe Gives VTL Customers More Options

March 29, 2023 Alex Woodie

When your IBM i backup data is 10x smaller, the backups complete more quickly and the local storage requirements are smaller. But that’s just the beginning of the savings for customers of LaserVault, which added a new data de-duplication feature to its virtual tape library (VTL) last year.

LaserVault has been providing IBM i backup solutions for many decades, and launched its line of VTL solutions in 2006. Customers can get ViTL, as the VTL is called, as a Fibre Channel- or SAS-connected backup appliance (LaserVault partners with Supermicro for hardware) or as shrink-wrapped software that customers can run on …
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Getting A Firm Handle On Power Systems And Storage Firmware

June 15, 2022 Richard Warren

Back in the old days of the AS/400 and the iSeries, most customers had a single box or maybe two, one for production applications and databases and one for development of high availability. And everything that box needed was inside of itself.

And at most, you applied two kinds of PTFs – those for the operating system and those for the microcode – to the machine, and you did that maybe once or twice a year and every once in a while you might add some group PTFs to update security or other important features.

But the world has changed …
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In The IBM i Trenches With: LaserVault

March 21, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

When somebody says they have been doing the same job for three or four decades, that is a big deal in the 21^st century because that kind of long-term employment is just not something anyone counts on. In the OS/400 and IBM i market, such constancy and longevity is, well, normal. Unremarkable. Expected. Good.

So it is with Brad Jensen, the founder and chief executive officer of Electronic Storage Corporation, a company that is perhaps best known for its LaserVault virtual tape library software, but since the company was founded in 1989 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it …
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Big Blue Rolls Out Red Hat Power Stack

February 15, 2021 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A few weeks ago, we told you about some of the announcements that Big Blue was packaging up for Power Systems hardware and separately for the combination of its Red Hat systems software stack and Power Systems iron for on premises datacenters. These announcements are slated to go out on February 23, as far as we know, but the IBM Announcement Letter system often has other ideas and sometimes even violates the company’s own embargoes, as if it has a mind of its own.

(For all we know, something that old and so full of data does have a mind …
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Cobalt Iron Supports Multiple LPARs with VTL

July 22, 2020 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops will be able to back up multiple LPARs to an individual virtual tape library (VTL) from Cobalt Iron, the company announced recently. The new capability overcomes a limitation that has existed since the company started to support IBM i with its data protection service a couple of years ago.

Cobalt Iron is a Lawrence, Kansas-based provider of enterprise data protection services. The company’s flagship offering, called Compass, provides backup, recovery, and related services for or all major computer platforms, including servers running on-prem, virtualized environments, and systems and applications running in clouds.

Some of Cobalt Iron’s customers …
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Sharing Tape Libraries Across Partitions Without VIOS

May 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

IBM i shops have a love-hate relationship when it comes to the Virtual I/O Server, or VIOS. With the latest IBM i Technology Refresh, IBM is giving the anti-VIOS group a feature they have been requesting: the capability to easily share a tape library among multiple logical partitions, or LPARs without involving VIOS, SANs, or multiple adapters.

IBM is calling the new feature “IBM i Virtualization for Tape Libraries,” and it’s based on RFE (request for enhancement) number 127631. While the words “tape libraries” and “virtualization” are in there, this is not a virtual tape library (VTL) solution. That already …
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StarWind Hooks VTL to IBM i

Data De-Dupe Gives VTL Customers More Options

Getting A Firm Handle On Power Systems And Storage Firmware

In The IBM i Trenches With: LaserVault

Big Blue Rolls Out Red Hat Power Stack

Cobalt Iron Supports Multiple LPARs with VTL

Sharing Tape Libraries Across Partitions Without VIOS

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search