SDLT (Super Digital Linear Tape) and AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape) provide
additional storage capacity as well as speed--for a price. SDLT tapes are
available with native capacities of 40, 80, 110 and 160 GB that double with
compression.
The maximum transfer rate of an SDLT 320 drive is 16 Mbps, and higher drives
are backward compatible with lower-capacity units. AIT-3 drives have 100 GB of
native capacity and offer transfer rates of 24 Mbps with compression. AIT-3
drives are backward compatible with AIT-1 and AIT-2 cartridges.
The ultimate backup unit, though, comes in the form of a jukebox that
contains multiple drives and tape banks and has a mechanism that shuffles the
tapes in and out of the drives as needed. Major players in the jukebox market
include Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Quantum, which offer jukeboxes with terabytes
of capacity for the enterprise.
Even with the optimal storage hardware in place, of course, you need the
right software to make the most of a SAN. Storage software should be based on
industry-standard architecture such as IP, SCSI, iSCSI or Fibre Channel. It must
provide a complete, end-to-end network storage infrastructure with services for
data and capacity management, data availability and data recovery, and it must
be compatible with your existing storage hardware. Although Microsoft's Windows
Server 2003 offers integrated storage-management utilities, most storage
solution providers recommend using storage utilities from Computer Associates,
EMC, FalconStor and other storage specialty companies.
Computer Associates' BrightStor SAN Manager serves as the central control for
SAN devices from multiple vendors, enabling administrators to diagnose and solve
most storage problems from a single console (and it topped all entries in Jon
Toigo's storage-management RFI analysis, "Out of the Abyss," page 10). It
automatically discovers and maps all SAN components and interconnections,
creating a topology image of an enterprise's SAN assets and showing logical
volumes, zones, zone sets, LUNs and routes within the SAN. It also provides
drill downs to each device and displays device status.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
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