Tape & Tape Libraries

Tape systems represent a critical element in the storage device hierarchy. The role of tape has evolved over time and is a major part of any Information Technology infrastructure. Included in tape systems are tape drives, tape libraries and virtual tape libraries. The popular tape drives used in enterprise environments will be covered by Evaluator Group as will the mechanical library mechanism used to automate the tape cartridge retrieval and load. Virtual Tape Libraries (or VTL's) represent a method to have disk masquerade as tape to improve backup reliability, isolate tape drive characteristics, and accelerate the backup process. Please note that backup solutions are covered in another section of the competitive knowledgebase.