In my prior article, David Hodgson, SVP during CA Technologies, Inc., described how the mainframe has been forced to change by a cloud revolution. Even yet a cloud is not indeed murdering off the
mainframe, Hodgson says it could meant a finish of another beast from a past: a fasten robot.
One of a mainframe areas saying vast changes is
mainframe storage. CA has started
supplying record to send mainframe storage to a cloud. First adult is
its partnership with Amazon and Riverbed and a new product called CA Cloud Storage, that provides mainframe owners with a cloud storage gateway.
Tape, a original
mainframe storage medium
Mainframes are used by vast organizations with a need to
store a lot of information for a prolonged time. In my talk with Hodgson, he gave an instance of a
pharmaceutical company. “In a drug attention they have to keep annals and
data for-it depends on a regulations, what arrange of drug it is-for
15, 75, or 100 years. Imagine carrying to keep information around
for 100 years.”
The aged approach of archiving petabytes of information for many years was
to use tapes. Thousands of tapes. Tapes that need silos for storage and
robots to barter them between a library and a fasten drives. Hodgson said, “Tapes are impossibly old
technology. They’ve been around given a ’60s. They haven’t altered most at
all, solely a density.”
Hodgson described some of a problems with fasten storage. “Once you’ve combined information to earthy tapes, there are all sorts of confidence problems
such as information loss. The thing can usually deteriorate. The comparison they are, a more
likely they are to break.”
Tape and disk
Several years ago CA combined a product called Vtape, a storage virtualization covering that allows mainframe owners to reinstate tape
with disk. Hodgson said, “The thought there was applications that would write to
tape storage could now write to virtualized tape. The applications don’t know
that’s what’s happening.”
Hodgson described since this did not meant a finish of a tape
robot. “On a mainframe, hoop storage is expensive. People were usually going to
virtualize a tapes that were vicious to them and that were active. They
were not going to virtualize all of their repository tapes.”
Tape, disk, and cloud
storage
Hodgson pronounced CA Cloud Storage solves a responsibility of
replacing repository tapes. “The simple value tender of this is cost
reduction, that is good since that’s what people wish to hear.”
Hodgson
thinks regulating cloud storage is a diversion changer. “It’s a healthy pierce for people
who have mainframes. They will have tapes, and applications that write to tape.
This is an focus they can use though changing any of a infrastructure.
All they have to do is confirm to use a new category of storage, that is one of
the Amazon classes.”
Tape, disk, cloud, and
more cloud
Hodgson does not trust mainframes are going divided any time
soon. “The infancy of a companies with mainframes are so contingent on them,
and they are so goal critical, they are not expected to be relocating off them.” CA
intends to enhance a use of cloud storage by their products. “It’s some-more about ‘how do we keep a mainframe applicable in a cloud environment?’ This whole
cloud storage charity is pivotal to that direction.”
CA Cloud Storage will enhance a use of cloud storage from
another approach of virtualizing tapes to an whole storage virtualization layer.
Hodgson used DB2 backup as an example. “You can extend that covering so a people
who are essay to a hoop are now essay to a cloud. We already have
products that do things like capacitate we to do, say, vast backups of information to
places like DB2. What we are meditative is people competence like to behind adult directly
to a cloud. We can interface a DB2 backup product with this virtualization
layer.”
Hodgson pronounced CA is looking for other partners in other
geographies. “Is Amazon a right partner, or would a internal partner be more
effective? For instance, Amazon is vast in Japan, though maybe a internal businesses
there would rather use Fujitsu as a partner. The vast financial companies-the
types that have mainframes-will be theme to inhabitant and supervision regulations,
where information can’t go out a country.”
No some-more tape
Hodgson believes that “eventually people will discharge all
the drudge infrastructure they’ve got. It’s a saving in building space, and it’s
another automatic thing that gets eliminated.”
Large organizations won’t be murdering off their fasten robot
any time soon. “Realistically, it will take several years to discharge their
robot fasten government device, since they’d have to go by a cycle of
replicating all their tapes into cloud storage and contrast that retrieval. It’s
not something that you’re going to exercise in a integrate of months. This is
going to be a long-term plan to cycle by all a thousands of tapes you
might have and discharge them.”
There’s copiousness of time to contend goodbye to a fasten silo in
the mechanism room, though a arise of cloud storage does meant a finish is coming.
Article source: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/hello-cloud-storage-goodbye-tape-silo/
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