Tape libraries have been all the rage ever since Storage Technology Corp scored a runway success with its Nearline automated tape library for 3480-type cartridges, and latest into the game is Carlsbad, California-based GigaTrend Inc, the US subsidiary of GigaTape GmbH, which has come out with SafeBak, which it reckons is the first digital audio tape library management system for the IBM Corp AS/400 family. Problem is that in this case library refers to logical volumes rather than anything that needs robotics to fetch and carry tapes, and SafeBak is a piece of software designed to offer fully automated tape management and significantly to reduce the time and errors often associated with tape storage management. It can run unattended and schedules object and library saves on tape that are backed up daily, weekly or monthly. It can do incremental as well as full back-ups by saving just the objects that have been updated since the last back-up of of the specified library. GigaTrend reckons that two 5Gb DAT cassettes will be enough to back up almost all AS/400 systems on a daily basis. It also has a Fast Object Retrieval access capability to retrieve an object or library on tape in under a minute from the time the object or library restore function is implemented, and backs up libraries of compressed objects. There is also a Concurrent System Save module that enables up to four tape drives and a disk save file to be used concurrently. It is designed to be used with GigaTrend’s 5Gb Turbo SafeDat SL and 10Gb DualSafeDat. The product is shipping now but no price was given. The TurboSafeDat SL 5Gb digital audio tape drive for all models of the IBM Corp AS/400 is also new. It features second-generation data compression technology so that it can write in uncompressed compressed mode automatically. It attaches to AS/400 9406 models via IBM’s 2601, 2602, 2607, 2608, 2621 features, and directly to all 9404 models. Again no price was given.
