OpenTech Systems, Inc., a provider of tape copying, migration and disaster recovery solutions for IBM z/OS-centric data centers, announced a new release of its flagship tape copy product that includes object access method (OAM) support, along with the ability allocate data to underutilized tapes.
The OAM support in the new release, Tape/Copy VDR product, version 2.7.3, addresses a "very unique kind of data set" that requires a special kind of support, Bruce Fisher, director of marketing at OpenTech Systems, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Data could consist of "a picture or a sound recording, anything that could be stored in binary format could be an object that customers might want to move, restore and save, "so that was one of the major points we added," he says.
In addition, the new release adds the ability to automatically add new datasets to underutilized tapes to maximize the usage of tape media, while the intelligent copying of input volume sets to multiple output volumes optionally prevents the creation of underutilized high density multi-volume stacked tapes.
Tape/Copy also bundles a range of tape utilities in the standard product. For some time, the company has offered a variety of tape utilities but those were in a separate package and priced separately from the Tape/Copy product, explains Fisher. To simplify the approach, these features are now incorporated into the core product.
The new release also includes a feature called Tape Browse, which enables the user to search to attempt the recovery of a data set and view the tape label online. Another feature, Partial Dataset Recovery, helps users attempt the recovery of a data set that has been overwritten and recover all data sets after the overwritten data set. Tape Compare is used to compare data sets or entire volume sets; and additional Tape Utilities provide functionality to erase, map and verify tapes.
In addition to the new features, Open Tech says Tape/Copy also now includes support for FDR/ABR full volume and incremental backups has been added to the previously supported Archive and Application backups. In addition, support for major tape management systems has been updated to current release levels. Support for HSM ML2 datasets has also been enhanced, and support for z/OS 1.12 has been added.
For complete details, visit the OpenTech Systems website.