Tape storage
This development from EMC has been seen by some analysts as a move away from the mainframe and into the distributed systems arena. While that is important, the majority of large enterprises still rely to some extent on their legacy mainframe systems and on the wealth of data that has been generated by such systems over the years. And managing that data can become a problem over time.
For example, tape storage is still the most common method for archiving data. But tapes can take up a lot of space and rarely hold a full complement of data. They may be capable of holding 4GB, but in practice can sometimes contain only 3MB or less.
One way around this is to use IBM's virtual tape storage system. Here, data to be archived is first collected on a dedicated server with large disk cacheing capabilities. It can be cached so that virtual volumes are created and, when a volume is full, it is then recorded onto tape.
This ensures that all tapes used are filled to capacity, which reduces the number needed. It also keeps the latest data more readily available on the server, while reducing the number of tape mounts that need to be undertaken.
