Tuning Manager Again; Virtualising Tape

Tuning Manager didn't work properly. I needed to re-install it. Unfortunately I got into an infinite loop. The uninstall process requested I start one of the Tuning Manager services, when I did and tried again, the uninstall failed asking me to stop all services...whoa.

So, strategically thinking, where should backup be virtualised? There are virtualising options to completely virtualise the tape drive and the tape cartridge; this can be on disk or eventually to tape, either in a one-to-one relationship or virtualised. These are good but have drawbacks; how do I get off the virtualised media? If the data was written to tape in a 1:1 relationship with the backup product, then I'm OK, if not I need a migration tool.

OK, so I could abandon the concept of tapes and write backups to a disk pool; great, but how do I retain those backups indefinitely? Not really practical on disk.

So, I could abandon the backup software altogether - if I use NAS products I can take snapshot type backups, there are even products which will snapshot SAN (SCSI) devices. However I'm tied to this product for my data backup going forward.

Hmm. It is a quandry. I'm settling on a number of requirements;

1. Retain data in the format of the backup product, wherever the data finally ends up.
2. Use tape as the final destination for data which must be maintained long term.
3. Use disk as an intermediary; depending on the backup product, choose integral disk backups or use a VTL solution.
4. Don't completely virtualise the entire tape subsystem; allow tapes to be written which can still be understood by the backup product.

Seems simple. Anyway, Tuning Manager, sorted it. Needed to uninstall from the console. Shame I lost all my data though.