VTLs deliver backup and restore reliability and performance. Problems associated with tape drives have encouraged IT administrators to look toward disk to reduce the length of time it takes to backup data and to increase the reliability of backups. VTL is the first application to ease the addition of disk to existing backup environments.

Implementing secondary storage using disk-as-disk, where data is backed up to a standard file-system format, requires an alternate method of getting the right data copied, at the right time—after all, backup software typically writes to tape, using a tape-compatible format.

Increasingly, backup software vendors are adding support for disk-as-disk backup but this support is new and not necessarily as robust as some backup environments require. Even after you add disk-as-disk, your strategy to write data to tape remains necessary. Best practices and—in many companies, legal mandates—require longer-term archival storage, often for years. That means that disk-as-disk complicates your data protection efforts. You have to add diskas-disk equipment, and software that supports it, while retaining existing backup strategies and tape libraries.