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Pros and cons of converting to VTL

We are currently running Netbackup 5.1, but I'm interested in VTLs. Can you talk about the pros and cons of converting to a VTL?

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I've written about this quite a bit, so I would search on my name and virtual tape libraries (VTL). [Editor's note: I just tried this and came across a tip he recently wrote: Pros and cons of VTLs] That being said, here is a brief summary. VTLs offer these advantages over regular disk:

  • Easier to share (create a VTL for each server, or use SSO in NBU, DDS in NW, LAN-free in TSM. With a disk array, you must create a partition for each server. Yuck.)
  • Higher performance (thousands of MB/s vs. hundreds)
  • No fragmentation (relates to above)

    • The one disadvantage they have over regular disk is that they're usually more expensive.

    This was first published in April 2006

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