Introduction; Vls12000 Gateway Components - HP StorageWorks 12000 - Virtual Library System EVA Gateway User Manual

1 Introduction

The HP StorageWorks virtual library system (VLS) family consists of RAID disk-based SAN backup
devices that emulate physical tape libraries, allowing you to perform disk-to-virtual tape (disk-to-disk)
backups using your existing backup applications. The VLS family includes different series of models
that vary in storage capacity and performance.
The VLS emulates a variety of physical tape libraries, including the tape drives and cartridges inside
the libraries. You determine the number and types of tape libraries a VLS emulates, and the number
and types of tape drives and cartridges included in each tape library to meet the needs of your
environment. You configure the size of the virtual cartridges in your VLS, which provides even more
flexibility.
The VLS automigration features allow you to establish data pools to create and manage mirror (echo
copy) or snapshot (smart copy) replication of data for additional protection against data loss.
Deduplication provides the functionality in which only a single copy of a data block is stored on a
device. Duplicate information is removed, thereby reducing the amount of storage used by a given
data block.
The VLS accommodates mixed IT platform and backup application environments, allowing all your
servers and backup applications to access the virtual media simultaneously. You can specify which
servers are allowed to access each virtual library and tape drive you configure. You can change the
default LUNs assigned to the virtual library and tape drives for each host as needed to accommodate
different operating system requirements and restrictions.
Data stored on a VLS is easily cloned to physical tape for off-site disaster protection or long-term
archival using a backup application.
This section describes the HP StorageWorks 300 and 12000 Gateway virtual library system models.

VLS12000 Gateway Components

A VLS12000 Gateway consists of at least two nodes (one primary node and between one and seven
secondary nodes) and dual LAN switches for internal inter-node connections. See the drawing of
racked nodes below. In addition, each VLS12000 gateway node contains hardware data compression,
dual processors, one 4 Gb quad port Fibre Channel HBAs, two 2048 MB memory modules, and two
60 GB SATA hard drives.
NOTE:
A VLS12000 node can be used as a secondary node (an upgrade) on a VLS300 system. In order to
do so, the VLS12000 node is set to compatibility mode (to disable hardware compression) when your
service representative installs the node.
No external storage is included with the VLS12000; instead, the gateway uses external storage in
existing arrays.
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