Introduction; Vls9000-Series Components - HP StorageWorks 9000 - Virtual Library System 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 9000 series virtual library system models.

VLS9000-series Components

A typical VLS9000-series system consists of at least one VLS9000 node, at least one VLS9000 array
(one base disk array enclosure and three expansion disk array enclosures), and one VLS9000
connectivity kit (two Ethernet switches for internal inter-node connections and two Fibre Channel
switches for disk storage connections). See the drawing of a racked system below. The VLS9000 7.5
TB and 10 TB systems consist of one node, one Ethernet switch, one base disk array enclosure, and
up to three expansion disk array enclosures.
Each VLS9000 node contains hardware data compression, dual processors, one 4 Gb quad port
Fibre Channel HBA, eight 2048 MB memory modules (for a total of 16 GB), and two 120 GB SATA
hard drives.
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