How to Use Tape Staging to Manage Archive Operations

The following are common scenarios that describe how you can use Archive to Tape to Tape operations to manage archive operations:

• If you need to store two copies of archive data, one copy on site and one copy at an off-site storage location, Archive to Tape to Tape lets you back up data directly to tape. After the archive job is complete, you can use Arcserve Backup copy utilities to automate and create copies of the archive tapes, and then ship the tapes to an off-site storage location.
• Archive to Tape to Tape lets you encrypt archive data when you are copying the data to its final destination media. This capability is beneficial when you are copying data from a virtual tape library or a library that does not support encryption to a library that supports encryption. This capability ensures that your archives are as fast as possible and the tapes that you need ship to an off-site storage location are encrypted.
• While archive operations are in progress, you may have many jobs that are archiving data to many different tapes. This can result in media that is not being used to its full capacity. Archive to Tape to Tape operations let you consolidate archives to ensure that media is being used to capacity when copying data to final destination. This capability helps to reduce the cost of media because you are using fewer tapes for final destination media, off-site storage, or both.
• If you need to reduce the length of time required to archive data and copy the data from a staging area to final destination, you can use virtual tape libraries (VTL) in your environment to manage archive operations.
• A VTL is a temporary storage location, such as a disk drive, that is configured to behave like a library. Since most archive data is transmitted across a network, Arcserve Backup lets you use multiplexing to reduce the archive window. When you use a VTL to store archive data, you can quickly read data from a multiplexing formatted data in a VTL because your operations do not encounter tape positioning overhead. As a result, the processes of archiving data to a VTL, reading from a VTL, and copying the data to final destination media is fast. Arcserve Backup lets you automate the process of copying to final destination media when you use a VTL to stage your archive data.