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Article: Virtual tape: a report from the front lines. (West Virginia Network automated tape library) (includes related article on the management of automated tape storage) (Technology Information)
- Article from:
- Enterprise Systems Journal
- Article date:
- May 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 101 Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Problem: Tapes. Lots of tapes.
West Virginia Network (WVNET), the state's higher education data center, had been using IBM 3480 cartridge tapes for data storage since 1989. By late 1996, users had a total of 60,000 tape cartridges in the WVNET tape library.
Adding network management and off-shift help desk responsibilities to the slowly shrinking operations staff was making it harder and harder to get a day's work done, and hundreds of new tapes were being unboxed and labeled every month.
WVNET systems staff investigated software solutions, such as Tape Mount Management (TMM) and third-party tape-stacking software. Unfortunately, WVNET ...