ACRONIS Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server User's Guide download pdf (Page 134)

Hardware

A tape library (robotic library) is a high-capacity storage device that contains the following:

 one or more tape drives

 multiple (up to several thousand) slots to hold tape cartridges

 one or more loaders (robotic mechanisms) intended for relocating the tape cartridges between

the slots and the tape drives

 barcode readers (optional).

Each tape may have a special label attached to the side of a cartridge and comprise of:

 a barcode to scan by a special reader that is usually mounted on a loader

 a readable barcode digital value.

Such labels are used for tape identification in a tape library or especially in off-site storage.

If all cartridges in a tape library have barcodes, the library is ready to be automatically managed by

software.

Tape libraries are a cost-effective solution for data storages with huge capacity. Moreover, tape is

perfect for archiving because cartridges can be stored off-site for enhanced data security. However

reading even a small amount of data from a tape library takes much more time (from several seconds

to several minutes) than from other types of data storages. The best practice of tape usage is "LESS

requests to write/read LARGER amount of data". So systematic access to very large quantities of data

is more suitable for a tape library than random access to small portions of data.

Limitations

Limitations of tape library usage are the following:

1. The consolidation (p. 363) operation is not possible for archives located on tapes. Deletion of a

single separate backup is impossible from a tape. It is possible to delete all the backups stored on

a tape. However, after this operation all the incremental and differential backups, stored on

other tapes and based on the deleted backups, cannot be used for data recovery. In a Custom

backup plan's retention rules the If deletion of a backup affects other backups > Consolidate the

backup option is disabled. Only the Postpone the deletion option is available.

2. Deduplication (p. 363) is not available for archives located on tape storage devices.

3. File recovery from a disk backup stored on tape is possible, but can take a very long time.

4. A tape with backups written by the storage node cannot be read on a tape device, locally

attached to a machine, the agent is installed on, because of a difference in tape format. To get

information about the readability of the archives on tapes, written by different components of

other versions of the product by means of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, see the Tape

compatibility table (p. 47) section.

5. Barcode printers are not used.

RSM Media Pools

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 uses Windows Removable Storage Manager (RSM) to manage tape

cartridges belonging to tape libraries.

To separate access to media by different programs the RSM uses so called Media Pools that are

logical media groups. There are two categories of media pools in the manager: System and

Application.

1 2 ... 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 ... 380 381

No comments

ACRONIS Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server User's Guide Page 134