Sun Microsystems Virtual Tape Library manual Features

Features

The Shred feature insures military standard, secure data destruction by overwriting virtual tape with random bit patterns. Data destruction jobs are queued so that the shred process does not have an excessive impact upon performance.

■Data compression

Sun VTL Plus 2.0 supports both software‐based and hardware‐based data compression.

Both data‐compression technologies offer similar functionality. Both are based on the LZO algorithm. When necessary, either can increase the amount of data that will fit on a virtual tape of a given capacity. Compression ratios can approach 2:1 for data sets made up of highly compressible file types, such as plain text and uncompressed bitmapped images (incompressible file types, such as ZIP archives, GIF images, and JPG images reduce the attainable compression proportionately).

However, the optional VTL Plus 2.0 compression hardware offers significantly higher throughput performance compared with the software‐only approach. Specialized ASICs (application‐specific integrated circuits) on the optional compression cards perform the calculations that software‐only solutions must perform on the system CPU.

■Support for Sun StorageTek ACSLS and Library Station library‐management software

ACSLS and Library Station support makes a high degree of integration possible between VTL solutions and complex enterprise storage environments that include large libraries with multiple partitions and mixed open systems and mainframe systems. Sun VTL virtual libraries can cache or copy tape volumes to storage pools on shared, ACSLS‐managed libraries. Alternatively, ACSLS can be configured to manage virtual libraries.

■Email notifications

The VTL email alerts feature monitors an extensible set of pre‐defined critical system functions and automatically notifies a local system administrator by email. You can extend or modify the CallHome monitoring scripts to customize monitoring for your needs.

■X‐ray diagnostics

The X‐ray feature combines snapshots of the current state of the appliance, its configuration, and its environment with system event logs and saves the result in a standard, tape‐archive (tar) format.

Key VTL features are discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

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