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IBM Virtualisation Engine TS7700 series

Outstanding virtualisation capabilities support data protection and retention

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Highlights

  • Can help reduce costs of data protection including power, maintenance, operations and support staff
  • Can help automate and reduce the complexity of IT operations using advanced policy management
  • Supports business continuity through Grid connectivity and automated replication
  • TS7740 can help accelerate backups and restores by using a tiered hierarchy of disk and tape to make more efficient use of tape drives
  • TS7720 provides a cache-centric solution for frequently accessed data.

In order to maintain continuous business operations, address regulatory requirements and archive business records, you need an infrastructure that enables you to manage your data from online application storage to offline, permanent archive media. Tape is a key part of both the backup and archive lifecycle. Tape still provides the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) alternative for securely storing long-term archives for recordkeeping and disaster recovery (DR). As data centres and data stores grow, tape operations can become more complex. This growth can lead to increased backup and restore times and higher management overhead and costs.

IBM Virtualisation Engine TS7700 is the solution

The IBM Virtualisation Engine TS7700 (TS7700 Virtualisation Engine) is a family of mainframe virtual-tape solutions that are designed to optimise tape processing. With one solution, the implementation of a fully integrated tiered storage hierarchy of disk and tape takes advantage of the benefits of both technologies to help enhance performance and provide the capacity needed for today’s tape processing requirements. Deploying this innovative subsystem can help reduce batch processing time, TCO and management overhead.


Common features1

  • May be attached to supported IBM System z servers
  • Maximum 2,000,000 virtual volumes
  • Maximum of 1024 virtual drives in a 4-way Grjd configuration
  • Web-based management tools
  • Advanced policy management
  • IBM TS3000 System Console

Hardware summary1

  • TS7740
    • Up to 112.8 TB usable Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) array cache
    • Attach up to 64 TS1100 or 3592 tape drives
    • Up to 16 4 Gigabits per second (Gbps) FICON channels
  • TS7720
    • Up to 1772 TB native tape volume cache using 2 TB Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives
    • Up to 16 4 Gbps FICON channels

1 based on 4 Cluster Grid configurations


Feature Benefits
TS7740 offers tiered hierarchy of disk and tape storage
  • Helps improve performance and capacity to help achieve a low TCO for tape processing
TS7720 offers large scalable cache for workloads requiring rapid recall
  • Helps improve application availability and shorten batch processing windows
Maximum of 1024 virtual drives and 2,000,000 virtual volumes
  • Helps reduce or eliminate bottlenecks in your tape environment
  • Supports the re-reference of volumes without the physical delays typical to tape input/output (I/O)
  • Helps increase performance of tape processes
Advanced policy management
  • Cache management for volume retention and deletion
  • Volume pooling that allows grouping of logical volumes on physically separate cartridges or cartridge pools
Up to four TS7700 systems can be configured to participate in a Grid environment
  • Helps to support high availability requirements
  • Helps to enhance availability during planned maintenance, or service or system upgrades
  • Avoids the transportation of cartridges in the event of a disaster
TS7740 supports TS1130, TS1120 tape drive-based encryption
  • Helps secure sensitive at-rest data
IBM TS3000 System Console
  • Allows IBM Technical Service to download new microcode and remotely monitor the installation
  • Can automatically dispatch a service representative when required
TS7700 offers Logical write once, read many (WORM) capability that can help to maintain records in a non-erasable/non-rewritable format
  • For companies subject to the requirement of Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 17-4, IBM offers this white paper (PDF, 663KB) from Cohasset Associates in which Cohasset discusses how the TS7700 can be used as part of an overall records retention infrastructure to meet the requirements of Rule 17a-4

Specifications Single Node 2 Cluster Grid 3 Cluster Grid 4 Cluster Grid
Usable RAID array cache (TB) Up to 28.2 Up to 57.6 Up to 86.4 Up to 115.2
Virtual drives 256 512 768 1024
TS1100 or 3592 tape drives 4 to 16 8 to 32 12 to 48 16 to 64
Virtual volumes 2,000,000 2,000,000 2,000,000 2,000,000
FICON channels 4 8 12 16
Warranty One year on-site repair – – –
Physical specifications
Width: 644 mm (25.4 in)
Depth: 1102 mm (43.4 in)
Height: 1804 mm (71.0 in)
Weight: 565.6 kg (1247 lb)
Supported environments1 IBM z/OS v1.9 or higher
IBM z/VM v5.3 or higher
IBM z/VSE v4.1 or higher
IBM z/TPF 4.1 or higher
Specifications Single Node 2 Cluster Grid 3 Cluster Grid 4 Cluster Grid
Usable RAID array cache (TB) Up to 443 Up to 888 Up to 1332 Up to 1776
Virtual drives 256 512 768 1024
Virtual volumes 2,000,000 2,000,000 2,000,000 2,000,000
FICON channels 4 8 12 16
Warranty One year on site repair – – –
Physical specifications
Width: 644 mm (25.4 in)
Depth: 1102 mm (43.4 in)
Height: 1804 mm (71.0 in)
Weight: 565.6 kg (1247 lb)
Supported environments1 IBM z/OS v1.9 or higher
IBM z/VM v5.3 or higher
IBM z/VSE v4.1 or higher
IBM z/TPF 4.1 or higher

1 Lists the minimum software level requirements for basic support. Please refer to the technical documentation for specific function or feature support.

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