EMC Corp. has announced its next generation mainframe virtual tape library (VTL). Designed for use in IBM z/OS and Unisys OS2200 environments, EMC says the new DLm6000 is the industry's fastest mainframe VTL with 2x the performance of its nearest competitor. By leveraging the latest advances in EMC Data Domain and EMC VNX storage systems, the company says the DLm6000 can address the full range of mainframe tape workloads with a single, consolidated all-disk system and will enable mainframe users to minimize their storage and replication costs and improve their disaster recovery capabilities. By matching different workloads to the most appropriate storage, the DLm6000 maximizes system performance and accelerates data retrievals and backup and recovery times. The new EMC DLm6000 will be available in September, 2011.
According to EMC, use cases such as backup and recovery, batch processing, DFHSM migration and data archive have required mainframe users to implement multiple storage systems to support all of their tape workloads. The numerous challenges with physical tape systems, including reliability issues and poor performance, have led to the addition of disk systems. And, some organizations have also added stand-alone deduplication systems, resulting in as many as three systems to manage, complicating storage management and still leaving protracted disaster recovery processes unaddressed. With the DLm6000, EMC says it is presenting a superior alternative to existing mainframe tape solutions.
The EMC DLm6000 offers concurrent support for both primary and deduplication storage within the same platform, enabling a consolidated systems approach. Tape data can be directed to the appropriate storage type based on its intended use. Backup operations can be directed to the deduplication storage where the data footprint will be minimized, which reduces storage and transmission costs. In addition, unique data types, such as DFHSM migration, can be directed to the primary storage and be available for near-instantaneous recalls.
"The new DLm6000 not only delivers new deduplication capabilities and faster performance for mainframe users, but also a new and unmatched approach to mainframe storage and data protection," says Shane Jackson, vice president of marketing, EMC Backup Recovery Systems Division. "The complexity of managing two or three separate platforms imposed by competing solutions is eliminated and reducing tape use removes a host of limitations that made it difficult for mainframe users to meet their SLAs for batch processing, backups and data access."