Allen S. Rout wrote:

This is irrational to some extent, I recognize.  But for the VTL, I
don't know where the database is; it's _magic_.

- Allen S. Rout

Good point Allen,

I realize that  VTLs come in different flavours from several
manufacturers, but is there any information about how their gizzards are
arranged?

I'd particularly like to understand how tape blocks are mapped to disk
blocks, and how the de-dup technology is organized.  There are a number
of possible implementations, and I can see that DB searches/updates
could become an enormous bottleneck particularly in a windows
environment with potentially thousands of identical copies of windows
system files.  This raises the spectre of another proprietary database
to be managed, grown, reorganized and re-indexed with limited facilities.

Does anyone have pointers to this sort of information or is it a deep,
dark commercial secret?

Thanks

Steve

Steven Harris
AIX and TSM Administrator
Brisbane Australia

Moving to Sydney Mid July - Offer me a job now and avoid the rush!