Why Should You Choose Vertices®?
Vertices is the comprehensive tape management solution that stores, moves, tracks and protects all the media — throughout your enterprise — with a single, easy-to-use application. It is a policy based system so it is designed for the enterprise that needs to know on which tapes information resides and bases its movement lists on the data contained on those tapes.
But how do you know if Vertices is right for you?
We've listed 10 simple questions to ask yourself when deciding to employ a tape management system. If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, then Vertices could be the answer you have been looking for.
1. Do you need to manage the media generated by your company's backup process?
It's easy to lose control over backup tapes when you must handle multiple servers, multiple sites, and diverse backup applications. Luckily, Vertices makes tape management effortless. Vertices is perfect if you need:
- Policy-based movement of tapes
- Automatically capture tape information from backup applications and legacy tape management systems
- Create and print complete audit reports to satisfy HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley compliancy requirements
- Centralize the management of multiple vaults and data centers
- Search for tapes via server, data set, or backup image
- Customize security views and privileges
- Quickly verify tape movements via bar-code scanning
But what if you don't need the level of detail the Vertices tape management system provides? B&L also offers VaultLedger® or VaultLedger OnDemand×.
Please review our tape management product comparison chart to learn more about the difference between our products.
2. Do you move tapes offsite for disaster recovery (DR) purposes?
Most enterprises rotate their disaster-recovery backups to safe offsite facilities. The rotation schemes vary depending on backup timing (daily, end-of-month, end-of-year, etc.) and backup type (full, incremental, etc.). Vertices tape management software provides exceptional data recovery protection, handling whatever rotation scheme you devise. It even tells you exactly when and where to move your media.
3. Have you ever lost or misplaced the media needed for a file recovery?
When your backup application requires media for recovery, you must be able to locate that tape at a moment's notice. The Vertices tape management system can tell you immediately where to find any media it tracks.
4. Have you ever mounted media selected for recovery only to discover that the
contents are outdated, incorrect, or marked "scratch"?
You may think all your backups completed successfully, only to find during disaster recovery that you've been storing the wrong media or rotating damaged media. The Vertices tape management system keeps track of media usage, verifies media contents, and-when integrated with your backup application-notifies you when backups are not completed successfully.
5. Are you required to keep data for extended periods of time?
With regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, many companies are required by law to save data for up to three to seven years, depending on industry type. If you must store financial data, emails, business transactions, or other data, for lengthy periods, you need a tape management system that guards against accidental or premature overwrites. The Vertices tape management software solution has redundant systems built-in to prevent any loss of data.
6. Have your operators ever written over a tape prematurely, losing valuable data
in the process?
With the volume of media being produced, accidents will happen. Media that is reused prematurely renders its original data useless. The Vertices tape management system has purge-protection safeguards that prevent such accidental re-use.
7. Do you conduct audits to reconcile the media inventory?
Most data centers periodically reconcile tape (media) inventory to make sure the tapes exist and that they reside in the correct location. At larger companies, both internal and external auditors perform these tape audits. The Vertices tape management system has a simple, easy-to-use facility for reconciling physical inventory with the media-tracking database. And with the optional bar code scanning module, the reconciliation can be done quickly and easily.
8. Have you ever lost track of older media after compressing or updating your backup
application's database?
Most backup applications process so many files that the database grows to unmanageable proportions and must be decreased in size on a continuing basis. But during such maintenance you may lose the ability to track older (yet unexpired) media. The Vertices tape management system keeps all information secure, thus protecting all your media, regardless of their age or retention periods.
9. Do you occasionally have trouble figuring out how to handle media with multiple
backup files from multiple servers?
New tape technology, such as LTO, allows a single tape to contain data from many different servers. This is especially true when one master server backs up other servers and/or desktops. Vertices tape management software easily handles the records for such "stacked" media, so you can keep track of server backups written to a single tape.
10. Do you want a single source to handle information about all the media generated by
all your backup systems, regardless of site, host, backup application, or platform?
With many servers, many sites, and diverse backup applications, it is difficult to administer and control the backup process. The Vertices tape management system helps you manage those resources by giving you access to all your media information in a single, easy-to-use application.
© 2013 B&L Associates.