IBM today continued to spread data deduplication across its product lines with the introduction of the System Storage TS7680 ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway for System z, bringing deduplication to z/OS mainframe environments.
The TS7680 ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway combines IBM’s virtual tape library (VTL) technology with its HyperFactor inline data deduplication software.
HyperFactor uses a series of algorithms to identify and filter out elements of data previously stored by ProtecTIER. The result is that only new data elements are stored on disk. Over time, the impact is data reduction ratios of up to 25:1, according to IBM.
The TS7680 features two-node clustering and up to 1PB of physical storage capacity per system.
The System z mainframe sees the VTL as a standard tape library, eliminating the need to replace existing backup applications or hardware.
IBM claims that users can store up to 25TB of tape application data on 1TB of disk using the TS7680 ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway with HyperFactor.
IBM acquired the ProtecTIER VTL and HyperFactor deduplication technology via the 2008 acquisition of Diligent Technologies.
In other mainframe/storage-related news, Bus-Tech today released version 7 of its Mainframe Data Library (MDL), a VTL that combines Intel server technology with the 7.0 release of Bus-Tech’s Virtuent virtual tape technology.
Virtuent 7.0 includes a simplified library file system (with storage classes), new HTML-based configuration utilities (allowing mainframe administrators to monitor Bus-Tech VTLs), z/OS Master Console support (eliminating the need for multiple management consoles), enhanced data encryption using RSA Key Manager, and phone-home features.
MDL version 7 includes a 64-bit operating system and is based on Intel SR2600 technology with quad-core Xeon 5500 processors.
