As part of its IT infrastructure upgrade, the Liberty Group`s Braamfontein head office has acquired a StorageTek Automated Tape Library with high capacity tape drives which provide a storage capacity equivalent to over 14 million individual volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The solution, implemented by MGX Storage Solutions, a division of JSE-listed MGX, consists of four StorageTek components: the Powderhorn library which has capacity for 5500 80 gigabyte cartridges, and will initially support four 9840 tape drives, eight TimberLine 3490E compatible drives, and a Virtual Storage Management (VSM) server.
Replacing an older tape storage system powered by an adapted industrial robot, the StorageTek equipment has not only meant a 30 fold increase in data capacity for the Liberty Group, but has also reduced the weekly backup window from 12 to 6 hours says Hamid Essop, Liberty Group`s divisional director, ITO.
"Replacing the current robot with the Powderhorn automated library also means a reduction in the cartridge retrieval time from over two minutes to 12 seconds, " Essop says. " Liberty will take security copies of live data on the system, which amounts to approximately 400 gigabytes daily."
The VSM installation is one of only three such sites in the country, and provides a non-volatile disk buffer equivalent to 64 tape drives. This provides sub-second recovery time for the most recent data, all the while writing archive data to tape. The VSM also streams the data onto the tapes in a way that ensures that each 80GB cartridge is filled. This has reduced the number of cartridges used to hold a complete copy of Liberty Group`s tape data from 4000 3490E cartridges to 50 StorageTek 9840 cartridges.
The components took a week to install and will provide backup capability to the disaster recovery site where there is an equivalent StorageTek Automated Tape Library System.
The Powderhorn will soon be used for open systems (UNIX and NT) backups via the use of StorageTek Library Station software, ultimately backing up data on over one hundered UNIX and NT Servers.
Liberty Group have just placed an order with MGX Storage Solutions for a Storage Area Network (SAN) incorporating a StorageTek 9840 drive and Brocade Silkworm 16 port switch. The objective is to amalgamate all of Liberty Group`s Unix and NT servers into a single backup/Disaster Recovery solution.
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MGX
MGX is a specialist in the information sector and is the market leader in the supply of products and services for the capture, storage, retrieval and management of information.
Its services allow customers to effectively manage the explosion of information, whether digital or paper-based, to turn this information into knowledge and to save time, money and resources.
MGX, which listed on the JSE in 1995, has achieved consistent growth in earnings of over 40% p.a. and employs over 1 500 people nationally.