Clareti Enterprise DistribuTape (EDT) is targeted to Tivoli Storage Manager environments, and provides the ability to "pool" tape library resources (StorageTek, ADIC, and IBM 3494 libraries are supported) among multiple TSM machines.

EDT is installed on both the TSM Servers and the TSM Storage Agent machines. EDT intercepts tape requests from TSM and sends those requests to the media manager. It selects from among the available drives presented by the media manager, and requests that a tape be mounted. Once mounted, EDT checks the tape to ensure it is working, and then informs TSM as to the location of the tape and instructs it to start writing the data. In this way, notes the vendor, all of the TSM servers that use the same type of drive can use a single pool in the tape library (as opposed to separate pools for each TSM server). In addition, non-TSM applications can additionally use the same tape library; so long as they utilize media manager for tape requests.

For the management of the platform, the vendor provides the EDT-ControlCenter, which provides a single management point--accessible from anywhere on the LAN/WAN--for all Clareti EDT instances. A basic version of the ControlCenter is now bundled with EDT, providing features including central management and configuration, direct access to almost all library functionality, and pre-emptive drive failure detection, reporting, and resolution. Among other features, the Enterprise version of ControlCenter additionally provides graphical tools to search for drives that are stuck or malfunctioning, and the recognition of a library's physical characteristics--enabling the platform to choose drives/ports based on their physical location (i.e., the closest drive or port).

An additionally available feature of the EDT platform is the vendor's EDT-PathWatch, which extends the basic platform to provide alternate pathing for communication requests; i.e., the ability to designate an alternate library to be chosen should the main communication path be non-responsive.

New in the latest release of Clareti EDT is the integration of the ControlCenter, as well as native support for Solaris x86 platforms.

Pricing starts at $3,900/per O/S image on Windows; $6,900/per O/S image or logical partition on UNIX platforms; and $12,900 for servers with better than 24 processors or mainframe Linux partitions.

Contact Gresham Enterprise Storage for further information.