MediaMerge/Tape Management System (MM/TMS)
The Bridge for the Communications Gap between the IT Infrastructure and Corporate Compliance
MediaMerge/TMS is a complete tape management software solution. It
works in concert with your existing backup software to drive and enforce your corporate
vaulting, retention and media lifetime policies.
MM/TMS also lets you to interrogate and manage the media catalogs of older backup
systems, thus allowing for immediate retirement or replacement of those systems. With unmatched flexibility MM/TMS is
able to run on almost any combination of midrange open systems and PC platforms.
MM/TMS allows centralized control of media policies and provides interactive supervision of media movement. This allows MM/TMS to be a single-source solution for ensuring regulatory compliance, data accessibility, and chain-of-custody. And since MM/TMS integrates with virtually any environment, it can be a key tool for reducing management overhead.
- Catalogs and manages existing backup systems
- Retires or replaces older backup systems and drastically reduces costs
- Reduces business risk
- Ensures disaster recovery testing
- Facilitates regulatory compliance
- Features rich, customizable and highly scalable
Media Vaulting: Moving Your Media to a Secure Place
If your organization makes backups to prepare for disaster recovery or for statutory requirements, then you are most likely vaulting (moving) your media to a secure offsite storage facility. Vault management is the primary mission of MM/TMS.
MM/TMS allows you to define schedules called media vaulting policies appropriate to each type and physical location of your data. MM/TMS drives the movement of media from the originating site to any number of secure offsite facilities while providing media inventory and search capabilities that leave you in control of your media.
Once your policies are defined, MM/TMS drives compliance without further management intervention. Your tape vaulting schedules and policies are used to generate daily move list tasks instructing operators what media is to be moved, where and when. Our software allows each task to be marked complete only after the operator has successfully performed an inventory on the outgoing media using a barcode scanner.
Media Retention: Protecting the Data Stored on Your Tapes
Once a backup is created, the data residing on that backup is only useful for a specified time interval, referred to as the retention policy. The retention policy can vary widely according to the nature of the data involved. A backup of mortgage data might remain useful for up to 47 years, while other data may only require retention for a few weeks. MM/TMS allows you to define retention policies and then enforce them using our inventory and accountability features.
Media Lifetime: Ensuring that the Media is Fit to Store a Backup
What happens if you use a tape beyond the manufacturer's recommended lifetime? In some cases the tape may be worn beyond the point it can be read. The question then becomes, when will you discover this problem? During a critical disaster recovery? Is any of your current media being used past its recommended lifetime? If so, how would you know?
MM/TMS helps to reduce this risk by tracking media mounts and lifetime at the tape volume level. Once you define a lifetime for a particular media type, MM/TMS will prevent the use of any media beyond that lifetime. On a daily basis operators are given a list of retired media which is enforced by the same inventory and accountability features used for vaulting and retention. With MM/TMS media tracking, you will never suffer a failed restore from using media past end-of-life again.
MM/TMS Specifications
View MediaMerge/TMS Screen Shots
Backup Systems
Veritas NetBackup™
Veritas Backup Exec™
Legato Networker™
CA ARCserve™
EDM (EMC Data Manager)™
HP Data Protector™
*Adding new software types regularly and at specific customer requests.
Platforms
Windows™
Solaris™
Linux™
(the below are without scanner interfaces)
HPUX™
IRIX™
AIX™
Any platform with Java support
Databases
MySql 4.1™
Oracle 8i™ (and higher)
MS SQL 2000
*Our engineers will also customize for specific DBs.
Q & A
Q: Do I need a Tape Management System (TMS)?
Does your organization use tape backup media? If so, then you probably need a TMS.
And here's why:
Q: Doesn't my backup software do all these things already?
A: No.
Most backup softwares do not drive vaulting policies at all. Retention and lifetime, if they are dealt with, are left for individual administrators to enforce with each individual software installation and configuration. In short you will get something less than full compliance and perhaps a lot less. With MM/TMS vaulting, retention and lifetime are centrally managed, and you are back in control.
Q: But I use Veritas and Legato backup products across Windows, Solaris, Linux, and other environments. Can you help?
A: Yes.
If you are using several backup products on multiple platforms, as is today's norm, it can be particularly difficult to enforce policies enterprise-wide. With MM/TMS you can manage vaulting, retention and lifetime uniformly and transparently across different backup products and environments. We deal with the differences, so you don't have to.
Q: What does MM/TMS require to run?
A: Nearly any PC, Open Systems, or Midrange Platform.
The MM/TMS client can run nearly anywhere. We support client installation on Windows 2000 (Windows 98 may work, but is unsupported), Windows XP, Solaris 2.8+ and nearly any recent Linux version. We are currently seeking Beta testers on other Unix platforms (although we believe that MM/TMS will run there, out of the box).
The MM/TMS server will run on any platform supported by Oracle 8i/9i, MS SQL 2000, or by MySql 4.x. Support for several other databases is forthcoming.
Q: Do I need to re-enter data already present in my backup systems?
A: No.
MediaMerge/TMS communicates with your backup software to obtain information about your backup clients, media and backups in real time. In MM/TMS you simply configure the software to be aware of your sites, servers, and policies. MM/TMS does the busy work.
Q: Does MM/TMS ever send information to backup systems?
A: No.
MediaMerge/TMS never writes data to your backup system.
Q: Do I need to install MM/TMS software on every backup server?
A: No. On most platforms, you need not install any software on backup servers.
MediaMerge/TMS only requires information about what backup software is running on each server and information about the account under which the software can be run.
Q: We are a service bureau. Can you help us?
A: Yes. We support your special needs.
MediaMerge/TMS allows you to segregate servers, media, and policies for each customer.
Q: Does MM/TMS support user-level security?
A: Yes.
MediaMerge/TMS allows precise control over the activities available to any user. No user, including the administrator, can delete any history data within our application.
Q: Does MM/TMS support reporting?
A: Yes.
MM/TMS supports multiple report templates. The list is constantly expanding. All reports can be saved in HTML, CSV (comma-delimited), Excel XLS, Adobe PDF, and XML formats.