CA Simplifies Storage Management for Mainframes

As
corporate data continues to grow rapidly, so does the cost of tape
backup, which remains essential for disaster recovery and long-term
data retention. IT organizations also have to manage multiple
generations of tape technology, maximize utilization of available
capacity, and limit staff time spent on storage management tasks.

The new releases of CA Vantage Storage Resource Manager (CA Vantage SRM) and CA Vtape Virtual Tape System (CA Vtape VTS) address these challenges by enabling customers to protect critical data while reducing z/OS costs.

"IT
organizations often must meet escalating business requirements with a
fixed mainframe staff and budget," said Stefan Kochishan, director of
storage product marketing at CA. "By simplifying storage management, CA
has made it easier for customers to execute critical data protection
operations without increasing infrastructure investments."

• CA Vantage SRM r12
  automates major storage management operations, including critical
  monitoring and analysis tasks and corrective actions across the z/OS
  storage environment. It helps ensure continuous job processing by
  predicting and preventing out-of-storage conditions. It also simplifies
  management of IBM’s DFSMShsm and integrates with CA Disk Backup and Restore
  for a range of media options to increase personnel productivity and
  improve storage availability service levels. Additional enhancements
  help reduce overhead while improving capacity planning and overall
  resource utilization for a broad spectrum of z/OS storage and media
  resources.
• CA Vtape VTS r12 reduces the cost of managing
  tape storage. It uses software virtualization and exploits zIIP
  specialty engines to free up processor capacity. By utilizing TCP/IP
  instead of expensive channel extenders, a new Peer-to-Peer Option
  provides real-time tape mirroring and immediate sharing of virtual tape
  volumes to disaster recovery or remote sites. Customers can also create
  and manage a tape-less environment, or share virtual volumes within or
  between a Sysplex—even if they are using different tape management
  systems. This lets IT organizations centralize physical tape processing
  and support remote sites that don’t use physical tape.

"CA
continues to evolve its mainframe storage management solutions to help
organizations like us keep up with relentlessly expanding data
protection and storage optimization requirements," said Genaro (Tony)
Pinillos, manager of technical support services at UC Davis Medical
Center, a major research hospital in California. "CA’s new virtual tape
and storage resource management capabilities are especially important
for containing costs and unifying DASD and tape operations wherever the
business needs it. In addition, by increasing tape utilization rates,
we can maximize the useful lifespan of our existing tape investments
and achieve significant media cost savings."

CA Vtape VTS
integrates with the CA Vantage SRM graphical user interface, so that
customers can visualize and manage their entire tape operations and
virtual tape infrastructure from a single point of control. Both
solutions are tightly integrated with CA’s complete line of z/OS storage management solutions to help customers drive operational efficiency and optimize utilization of finite z/OS storage resources.