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Solving The Storage Riddle: Page 5 of 5

The system uses a device that attaches to Grange's mainframe system that runs its core business applications. The device, Mainframe Appliance for Storage from Bus-Tech Inc., emulates an IBM 3490 tape unit so perfectly that only a few minor changes to the mainframe code were required.

In the Grange configuration, each data center has a MAS unit attached to a mainframe via a 17-Mbyte-per-second channel. The data is replicated to a Dell-based RAID 1-terabyte storage array and from there is replicated to Spokane. All tape-based operations continue to function exactly as before but without tape. Instead, data storage and retrieval use fast, error-protected disk storage.

Going to virtual tape has cut the amount of time required to do tape backups, freeing up time for nightly batch processing. "By elimination of physical tape handling, we can run more batch jobs over the weekend," says Dale Caldwell, Grange's systems programmer.

For business-technology managers, the challenge is to find a storage-service provider that's able to link its services to a customer's business objectives. Business-related service-level agreements should be crafted in terms of the stockholder's priorities, not tech-related terms, which have little business value, Gartner says. In regulatory compliance, businesses are likely to turn to providers that are first to market with services for assessment, architecture designs, implementations, and managed compliance services.