EMC Wants to Kill Tapes for Mainframe

EMC Corporation announced its next generation mainframe virtual tape library (VTL).  

Designed for use in IBM z/OS environments, the new EMC DLm6000 is the industry’s fastest mainframe VTL with 2x the performance of its nearest competitor. By leveraging the advances in EMC Data Domain and EMC VNX storage systems, the DLm6000 enables mainframe users to minimize their storage and replication costs and improve their disaster recovery capabilities.  

Unlike competing products, the DLm6000 is a solution that can address the range of mainframe tape workloads with a single, consolidated all-disk system. By matching different workloads to the most appropriate storage, the DLm6000 maximizes system performance and accelerates data retrievals and backup and recovery times.  

Use cases such as backup and recovery, batch processing, DFHSM migration and data archive have required mainframe users to implement multiple storage systems to support all of their tape workloads. The numerous challenges with physical tape systems, including reliability issues and poor performance, have led to the addition of disk systems. Some organizations have also added stand-alone deduplication systems resulting in as many as three systems to manage, which complicates storage management while still leaving protracted disaster recovery processes unaddressed. It is against this backdrop that EMC introduces the DLm6000, an alternative to existing mainframe tape solutions.

The EMC DLm6000 is a mainframe virtual tape library that offers concurrent support for both primary and deduplication storage within the same platform, enabling a consolidated systems approach. Tape data can be directed to the appropriate storage type based on its intended use. Backup operations can be directed to the deduplication storage where the data footprint will be minimized, which reduces storage and transmission costs. Data types, such as DFHSM migration, can be directed to the primary storage and be available for near-instantaneous recalls.

Product Highlights

• Integrates VNX7500 and/or Data Domain DD890 storage systems to support all mainframe use cases
• Over 2 GB/s throughput is 2x faster than closest competitor
• Logical capacity scales to 5.7 petabytes
• z/OS Console Support centralizes platform management
• Integrated system reduces footprint, power and cooling requirements
• Reduces replication costs by using deduplication

Braintree, Massachusetts-based MIB Group, Inc. is a provider of fraud protection information for individually underwritten life, disability income, long-term care and critical illness insurance. "By moving to a disk-based solution for our mainframe environment, the elimination of physical tape has already allowed us to reallocate a staff position and do away with third party tape management costs–as well as the inherent security concerns that go with external tape management services. As a current EMC DLm user, the availability of the DLm6000 demonstrates distinct improvements for mainframe users in general and for us here at MIB. We see the improved performance of the DLm6000 helping us address our ever-shrinking batch windows. In addition to performance benefits, the consolidated management will add new levels of visibility and reduce the complexity associated with managing multiple workload types.  We expect EMC to be a long- term partner of ours and to continue to address our future needs through new and innovative mainframe solutions that solve real-world issues," said Rod Feak, Senior Systems Programmer, MIB Group, Inc.

"Mainframe users grapple with unabated data growth, aging tape infrastructure and inadequate disaster recovery solutions. EMC’s DLm6000 provides mainframe customers an optimized storage platform with deduplication and replication as a viable alternative to existing and cumbersome recovery solutions," said Robert Amatruda, Research Director, Data Protection and Recovery, IDC

"The new DLm6000 not only delivers new deduplication capabilities and faster performance for mainframe users, but also a new and unmatched approach to mainframe storage and data protection.  The complexity of managing two or three separate platforms imposed by competing solutions is eliminated and reducing tape use removes a host of limitations that made it difficult for mainframe users to meet their SLAs for batch processing, backups and data access," said Shane Jackson, Vice President of Marketing, EMC Backup Recovery Systems Division

Availability
The new EMC DLm6000 will be available in September, 2011.