Flexibility and Performance using VTL Maid

iMaidStor with De-Duplication

A Virtual Tape Library solution will improve a backup and restore process but the major disadvantage to a VTL solution is the additional energy costs associated with running and cooling the storage assigned to the VTL, plus the additional data center space needed for the VTL storage. A typical physical tape library will have 2 - 14 physical tape drives, a physical tape library robot and hundreds of physical cartridges stored in cartridge slots. At any one time 14 physical tape drives could be spinning, one physical tape library robot could be moving and 100 plus cartridges could be sitting idle in their cartridge slots. Compare this with multiple disk drive arrays containing, for example a total of 120 plus disk drives all assigned to the VTL appliance. Every drive is spinning and the controllers and fans needed for cooling are bursting with electricity. Naturally the cost per stored TB of watts consumed for a VTL solution is a lot higher than for a physical tape library solution.

MAID

The basic concept of MAID or Massive Array of Idle Disks is to use a very large number of disk drives that provide large capacity, high volumetric density, and to spin the discs down when idle for a predetermined time. MAID technology is ideally suited to cost effectively address long-term data storage requirements and operates on the principle that when long-term data is stored on disk, all disks need to spin all the time. Instead, disks are powered only when needed. MAID combines the reliability and performance of disk with the scale and affordability of tape.  

De-Duplication

Reduction of stored data size can be achieved with de-duplication which involves a searching sub-file level search for repeated data strings and the replacement of repeated strings by pointers to a base string. It's a super-efficient form of compression and de-dupe ratios of 20 - 50:1 have been found to be achievable. With de-duping what originally required a 100 disk VTL would now require a 10-20 disk VTL, meaning an 80 percent or more reduction in spindles and energy costs.

itiso De-Duped VTL MAID Solution

Itiso's MAID VTL storage offerings integrate both MAID, de-duplication and a virtual tape library interface. In a virtual tape library environment with MAID and de-duplication, faster restore time, significant reduction in backup time, disk space needed for data, backup and significant savings in power and large reductions in generated heat can be achieved.

Cool your storage with Itiso’s De-Duped VTL MAID Solutions