Virtual tape library

A virtual tape library (VTL) is a data storage virtualization technology used typically for backup and recovery purposes. A VTL presents a storage component (usually hard disk storage) as tape libraries or tape drives for use with existing backup software.

Virtualizing the disk storage as tape allows integration of VTLs with existing backup software and existing backup and recovery processes and policies. The benefits of such virtualization include storage consolidation and faster data restore processes. For most mainframe data centers, the storage capacity varies, however protecting its business and mission critical data is always vital.

Most current VTL solutions use SAS or SATA disk arrays as the primary storage component due to their relatively low cost. The use of array enclosures increases the scalability of the solution by allowing the addition of more disk drives and enclosures to increase the storage capacity.

The shift to VTL also eliminates streaming problems that often impair efficiency in tape drives as disk technology does not rely on streaming and can write effectively regardless of data transfer speeds.

By backing up data to disks instead of tapes, VTL often increases performance of both backup and recovery operations. Restore processes are found to be faster than backup regardless of implementations. In some cases, the data stored on the VTL's disk array is exported to other media, such as physical tapes, for disaster recovery purposes (scheme called disk-to-disk-to-tape, or D2D2T).

Alternatively, most contemporary backup software products introduced also direct usage of the file system storage (especially network-attached storage, accessed through NFS and CIFS protocols over IP networks) not requiring a tape library emulation at all. They also often offer a disk staging feature: moving the data from disk to a physical tape for a long-term storage.

While a virtual tape library is very fast, the disk storage within is not designed to be removable, and does not usually involve physically removable external disk drives to be used for data archiving in place of tape. Since the disk storage is always connected to power and data sources and is never physically electrically isolated, it is vulnerable to potential damage and corruption due to nearby building or power grid lightning strikes.