Backing Up Data › Backup Staging Methods › How to Manage Backup Data Using Tape Staging › How to Use Tape Staging to Manage Backup Operations

How to Use Tape Staging to Manage Backup Operations

The following are common scenarios that describe how you can use Backup to Tape to Tape operations (B2T2T) to manage backup operations:

• If you need to store two copies of backup data, one copy on site and one copy at an off-site storage location, B2T2T lets you back up data directly to tape. After the backup job is complete, you can use Arcserve Backup copy utilities to automate and create copies of the backup tapes, and then ship the tapes to an off-site storage location.
• B2T2T lets you encrypt backup 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 backups are as fast as possible and the tapes that you need ship to an off-site storage location are encrypted.
• While backup operations are in progress, you may have many jobs that are backing up data to many different tapes. This can result in media that is not being used to its full capacity. B2T2T operations let you consolidate backups 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 back up data and copy the data from a staging area to final destination, you can use virtual tape libraries (VTL) in your environment to manage backup operations.

  A VTL is a temporary storage location, such as a disk drive, that is configured to behave like a library. Since most backup data is transmitted across a network, Arcserve Backup lets you use multiplexing to reduce the backup window. When you use a VTL to store backup 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 backing up data to a VTL, reading from a VTL (disk), 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 backup data.