Like competing offerings, HP's tape controllers allow interfaces to be changed independently of the tape drive, thus allowing companies to upgrade their SANs without having to swap out their existing tape libraries and drives, the company says. The controllers are available for HP's ESL 9322 and 9595 tape libraries.
Gartner analyst Fara Yale says the new offering fits into HP's overall ILM strategy. "Part of ILM is putting the right data on the right media at the right time using the right methodology... This is part of that," she says.
The controller-based architecture can, according to HP, be deployed incrementally, so companies can simply add on new features as the need arises, or as HP makes them available.
The only part of the architecture that is available today is the embedded, integrated interface controllers, which sit between the tape drives and the SAN. The controllers, which have been shipping for about four weeks, allow administrators to manage all of the drives in a library from a single, Web-based interface, and simplify shared access in the network, Luttrall says. In addition, he says, the controllers provide reporting and monitoring capabilities like tracking and detecting errors affecting SAN backup. They can also restore operations and identify configuration issues and conflicts in the SAN.
The next portion of the architecture set to become available is the Interface Manager, which HP expects to start shipping in September. The Interface Manager is a separate controller card with embedded software that plugs into the tape library along with the Interface Controller cards. It can intelligently configure the system based on the analysis it generates through its onboard flash memory, which maintains the history and health of the tape library and the storage network. It can also detect errors and easily adapt to changes, HP claims.
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