ORACLE FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Oracle’s StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
Overview
This technology has proven to increase performance
Oracle’s StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7
and provide very cost-effective mainframe storage
is the industry-leading high availability virtual storage
through the utilization of storage tiers of disk, tape and
st
solution for mainframe environments. VSM 7 is the 1
cloud technologies. With VSM 7, this has been
mainframe virtual storage system to auto-tier to a public
enhanced through the introduction of tiering to the
cloud within System z (mainframe) enterprise
Oracle Storage Cloud Service. The Oracle Storage
environments. This industry-leading product has been
Cloud Service is a highly secure, highly resilient
on the market for more than 18 years with numerous
enterprise class cloud from Oracle, the leader in mission
enhancements added during that time period.
critical, enterprise solutions.
The solution incorporates disk, physical tape and cloud
The StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System has
resources. Data is initially stored within disk, and the
demonstrated itself as a very reliable, proven
disk in turn presents virtual magnetic tape file images to
technology in the most demanding, data-intensive data
the host. Think of it as disk that pretends to be physical
centers. Besides optimizing customers’ physical tape
tape drives, but the tape drives are virtual.
environments, the system has become an effective
technology for customers wanting to dramatically
StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System provides
improve their disaster recovery capabilities.
tremendous data storage flexibility by allowing customer
data, depending upon where it resides within its
Customer Benefits
lifecycle, to reside within disk, tape, cloud or any
StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 provides
transparent tape storage optimization for enterprise
mainframe customers. It is well suited for disaster
recovery, data consolidation, data protection, and data
sharing. StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7
and StorageTek Virtual Library Extension protect and
manage active data, active archives, and fixed archive
data appropriately while controlling TCO and energy
consumption.
combination thereof. If the customer wants the data to
reside within disk only — what is known as “tapeless”
virtual tape — the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager
System can support that requirement. It also provides
the ability to migrate data to real physical tape and or
the cloud as a background task for less expensive,
longer-term storage.
Key Benefits:
ORACLE FAQ
The StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 is simple
to implement, manage, and grow and is the only architecture
supporting multiple tiers of data storage all managed by a
single point of control. The StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager System 7 can scale capacity up to 825 TB of
customer usable native capacity (w/o compression) in a single
rack utilizing on demand capacity increases for quick, nondisruptive implementation. In addition, fully automated
management and policy driven operation allows for easy set-
Q: What is Oracle’s strategy for the StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System?
A: To continue to provide leadership in the mainframe virtual
tape market with technology innovation across virtual tape
system design, management, and services. Now Oracle is
introducing the seventh generation of the StorageTek
Virtual Storage Manager System. Key design goals for this
generation include:

Seamless integration with Oracle Storage Cloud Service
and Oracle Storage Cloud Service—Archive Storage.

Maintain the leadership position of StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System in the virtual tape market by
bringing to market more flexibility and features at a
significantly reduced cost as compared to other alternatives.

Significantly lower the cost of the system in order to reduce
$/GB of mainframe storage to new lows and further reduce
total cost of ownership for virtual tape systems.

Improve overall system design while protecting the
customer’s investment in both legacy and new systems:
and-forget policy management.
The StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 is a flexible
and adaptable system, offering multiple configuration options.
Each StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 delivers
up to 4000 MB/sec of peak write throughput. This architecture
easily supports the largest enterprises. StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System 7 can easily be integrated into an
existing StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
environment, all still managed by a single point of control while
providing complete data availability and interchange. For small
to medium mainframe environments the system can be

StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 can
coexist with and is compatible with legacy StorageTek
Virtual Storage Manager System

StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 is
compatible with the customer’s existing StorageTek
Virtual Storage Manager System data management
policies. No need to reset existing policies when
deploying StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager
System 7 into existing StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager System environments
configured as a disk-only architecture, but it is flexible enough
to add physical tape or tiering to the cloud at a later time if
needed.
Multiple site support is provided either locally or geographically
distributed all under a single point of control. Proven data
protection and recovery are available to meet any business
requirement.
The StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7

mainframe-class reliability is designed in with data integrity and
redundancy throughout the system. This high availability
design utilizes two independent processing nodes with high
Continue to drive complexity out of and flexibility into the
system architecture

The entire StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager
System environment can be managed from a single,
central point of control, reducing management
complexity

Flexible “capacity on demand” ensures that customers
purchase only the storage needed, reducing risk and
maintaining high utilization rates
speed interconnects, redundant disk communication paths,
and hot swappable components with automatic failover. In
addition, the high level of error correction designed into the
solution ensures that no incorrect data will be returned to MVS.
Couple this with triple parity RAID, and the system delivers a
5x “mean time to data loss” advantage over a RAID6.
Coexistence and full data interchange with legacy StorageTek
Virtual Storage Manager Systems further lowers TCO while

Continue the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
tradition of a highly scalable system that meets today’s and
the future’s most demanding data management
requirements
protecting legacy investments. The system is compatible with
StorageTek Virtual Library Extension, tape libraries, and tape
technologies and with all existing StorageTek Virtual Storage

StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 scales
in both performance and capacity over 250x from its
base configuration
Manager System data management policies.
Frequently Asked Questions
2 | FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - ORACLE’S STORAGETEK VIRTUAL STORAGE MANAGER SYSTEM
ORACLE FAQ

StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 scales
to 825 TBs in a single rack and can manage up to 211
PBs in a single tapeplex

Support for the Oracle Storage Cloud Service
provides near infinite scalability
Q: Can StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 be
utilized in an open systems environment?
A: Yes. It can support both mainframe system Z mainframe as
well as heterogeneous environments.
Q: I hear about disk-only tapeless solutions. Can StorageTek
Virtual Storage Manager System 7 provide that capability?
A: Yes. It goes beyond just tapeless by providing the ability to
manage tiers of storage. One such tier is disk — if diskonly is all that is required; the StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager System 7 can provide that support. However,
depending upon the access characteristics of the data,
other storage tiers can be provided with the use of physical
tape drives. And the optional StorageTek Virtual Library
Extension provides businesses with additional disk and
buffering capability to keep more active data sets resident
on disk for even longer periods of time.
Q: Why would I want a tapeless solution?
A: Some applications require fast response times. Examples
of these applications include HSM, SAR, backup, or
imaging type of applications. For these types of
applications, keeping the active data within disk for longer
periods of time (from hours to months) provides the fast
response that the application demands.
Q: What advantages does tape provide, and why would I want
to keep tape in my shop at all?
A: The ratio between disk and tape can change depending
upon the application, but a good understanding of the
lifecycle of a dataset can help answer this question.
Shortly after the dataset is created, it has a high probability
of recall. The range of time could be hours/days/weeks or
months — this data should reside within disk. However,
after some point the probability of recall diminishes
dramatically and having a tape tier of storage results in the
most cost-effective storage. Having options with different
storage tiers provides a wide range of flexibility, which can
have a direct impact on storage total cost of ownership
(TCO). Plus, having tape in the storage tier can provide
“overdraft protection” in the event the disk fills up. In this
situation it is not necessary to over-provision the available
disk in order to assure disk buffers are not filled up, which
results in tape jobs being terminated.
Q: What StorageTek tape drive and library technologies are
supported?
A: StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 supports a
wide range of tape and library technologies that can be
mixed and matched, as well as different generations within
those technologies. High-capacity tape technology also is
supported through StorageTek T10000D tape drives.
Library support consists of StorageTek SL8500, as well as
Oracle’s smaller StorageTek SL3000. All can be mixed
and matched within a single StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager System 7. That is true investment protection.
Q: How can the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
lower the demand on robotics and tape transports?
A: By utilizing a hybrid disk/tape solution, StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System 7 can satisfy most data recalls
directly from the disk, thus reducing recalls from physical
tape. These datasets typically need to be stored within the
disk longer because of their usage patterns, which could
be from 45 to 90 days, or longer, before the probability of
reuse diminishes.
Q: How does the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
7 scale from a virtual tape drive, performance, and capacity
perspective?
A: The flexible architecture of StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager System 7 provides the ability to be highly
scalable in these areas. Each system has its own virtual
tape drive, performance, and capacity characteristics, and
up to 256 StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager Systems
can run in tandem under a single point of control. By
allowing interconnections within the subsystem, the
StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 can provide
capacities up to 211 PBs of native customer usable
capacity (w/o compression) with more than 65,000 virtual
tape drives to choose from. Performance can be scaled
because each StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager
System 7 has its own performance characteristics. This is
expanded further with the introduction of StorageTek
Virtual Library Extension.
Q: What investment protection is provided when moving from
one generation of StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager
System to another?
A: StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7 was
designed for investment protection. All generations of these
systems can coexist within a single subsystem. Data
created on one system can be recalled into another, thus
providing complete data interchange. In addition, existing
Oracle enterprise tape drives as well as tape libraries will
3 | FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - ORACLE’S STORAGETEK VIRTUAL STORAGE MANAGER SYSTEM
ORACLE FAQ
work with the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
as integrated tape.
Q: What are the main benefits of StorageTek Virtual Storage
Manager 7 over the previous StorageTek Virtual Storage
Q: What BC/DR options are available?
Manager 6?
Q: This is where StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System
7 truly out-distances the rest by providing a comprehensive
hierarchy of BC/DR capabilities.
A: VSM 7 provides up to 2X the performance and capacity
A: With the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 7,
there is a wide range of options ranging from the simplest
to the more complex, depending upon each customer’s
recovery time objectives and budget. All options are
controlled by policy management, which allows customers
to pick and choose what functionality works best for them.
If customers want to physically or electronically migrate
data to a remote site or the cloud, the StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System 7 can do it all.
Q: Is there a Graphical User Interface available?
Q: What is StorageTek Virtual Library Extension?
A: The Virtual Storage Manager moves data through
A: Oracle has introduced the StorageTek Virtual Library
Extension, the industry's first massively scalable second
tier of disk storage for mainframes. StorageTek Virtual
Library Extension works in conjunction with the StorageTek
Virtual Storage Manager System 7 to bring a cost-effective,
dense, and highly available additional tier of disk storage to
mainframe environments. Oracle’s StorageTek Virtual
Library Extension expands Oracle’s StorageTek Virtual
Storage Manager System 7 to provide a massively
scalable second tier disk storage appliance, allowing
customers to economically keep active data on disk media
for increased data recall performance before being
migrated to tape for optimal longer term storage.
plus support 16GB FICON Channels. In addition, VSM 7
provides support for tiering to cloud storage.
A: Yes. There is a Virtual Storage Manager Graphical User
Interface (GUI) this was designed specifically for VSM in order
to make the customers interface with VSM as simple as it can
be.
Q: How does it work when I want to migrate data from the
StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager into the Oracle Cloud?
management classes and storage classes. With the cloud
Oracle simply is adding a new storage class known as cloud.
Once the class is set the Virtual Storage Manager moves that
data from the on-premise Virtual Storage Manager into the
Oracle Cloud. The data is recalled back from the Oracle Cloud
into the Virtual Storage Manager. Simple as that.
Q: What is the Virtual Storage Manager Console?
A: The Virtual Storage Manager Console is a new optional
feature of the Virtual Storage Manager 7 that moves the Virtual
Tape Control Software (VTCS) which is virtual tape
management outboard into the Virtual Storage Manager
appliance itself. This allows a darkened data center without
Q: Can the StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager support Non
access to an active mainframe to access that Virtual Storage
Disruptive Code Loads?
Manager data.
A: Yes utilizing a dual processor architecture within the alliance
most operations are non disruptive.
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