IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 Release 1.4a: Tape Virtualization for System z Servers

An IBM Redbooks publication

Note: This is publication is now archived. For reference only.

Published 17 February 2009, updated 03 April 2009

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ISBN-10: 0738432237
ISBN-13: 9780738432236
IBM Form #: SG24-7312-02
(734 pages)

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Authors: Babette Haeusser, Luciano Cecchetti, Rafael Garcia Lecuona, Daniel Rincon Lopez

Abstract

The IBM® Virtualization Engine TS7700 provides tape virtualization for the System z® environment. As the follow-on product to the highly successful IBM TotalStorage® Virtual Tape Server, the TS7700 Virtualization Engine is designed to provide improved performance and capacity to help lower the total cost of ownership for tape processing. It introduces a new modular, scalable, high-performing architecture for mainframe tape virtualization.

The TS7700 Virtualization Engine integrates the advanced performance, capacity, and data integrity design of the 3592 Tape Drives, industry-leading tape technology from IBM, with high-performance disk and a new advanced System p® server to form a storage hierarchy managed by robust storage management firmware with extensive self management capability. It includes functions such as advanced policy management to control physical volume pooling, cache management, dual copy, dual copy across a grid network, and copy mode control. The TS7700 offers a new standards-based management interface and enhanced statistical reporting, compared to the VTS.

This IBM Redbooks® publication provides a detailed description of the TS7700 Virtualization Engine. In addition, it discusses the tasks involved with planning, implementing, and operating the TS7700 Virtualization Engine and describes migration considerations.

This book covers the TS7700 Virtualization Engine releases up to and including TS7700 R1.4a and includes information about supported tape drives and libraries current and supported at the time of writing. For detailed information about the IBM Virtualization Engine TS7740 R1.5 and the disk-only TS7720 Virtualization, refer to IBM Virtualization Engine TS7740 R1.5 and TS7720: New Virtualization Options for Mainframe Servers, SG24-7712, which will be available in early 2009.

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Introducing the TS7700 Virtualization Engine
Chapter 2. Architecture, components, and functional characteristics
Chapter 3. Pre-installation planning and sizing
Chapter 4. Hardware implementation
Chapter 5. Software implementation
Chapter 6. Migration
Chapter 7. Operation
Chapter 8. Performance and monitoring
Chapter 9. Disaster recovery and failover scenarios
Appendix A. Availability configurations
Appendix B. Library Manager volume categories
Appendix C. Feature codes
Appendix D. TS3500 checklists
Appendix E. 3494 Checklists
Appendix F. TS7700 Virtualization Engine implementation, step-by-step
Appendix G. JES3 implementation
Appendix H. DEVSERV QLIB command
Appendix I. TS7700 Statistics record format
Appendix J. Sample JCL

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