SDLT tape drive emulations

[Alun Rodgers]

Hi,

We're hoping to buy a VLS6518 and wondered about support for SDLT1 tape formats.

Our current physical infrastructure is based around MSL5052SL libraries with SDLT110/220 drives. We want to maximise our backup window by backing up to the physical drives and the virtual drives during the backup window and then write the virtual tapes off to physical tapes during the day.

The only SDLT emulation I've seen is for SDLT2 (160/320).

Will the duplicate tape feature (in BackupExec 10d) be able to write SDLT2 virtual tapes onto SDLT1 physical tapes?

[Kevin Collins_11]

Alun,

From our testing with BackupExec we believe you should be able to do this since it offers the ability to copy objects instead of full tapes. Full tape copy implies that the tape types are identical. Object copy enables you to move to a different tape technology.

Thanks for your interest in the VLS!

Regards,

Kevin

[scot dowdy_1]

I am not certain how the BE tape feature works specifically. In general, copying from a virtual tape to a physical tape cartridge will work when the virtual cartridges are restored to the server then copied back out to the physical device, regardless of the specific emulations used. Note that it is possible that when virtual cartridges of higher capacities are copied to physical drives that support a smaller capacity cartridge the copy may result in multiple physical cartridges.