This IBM® Redbooks® publication covers IBM TS7700 R5.2. The IBM TS7700 is part of a family of IBM Enterprise tape products. This book is intended for system architects and storage administrators who want to integrate their storage systems for optimal operation.

Building on 25 years of experience, the R5.2 release includes many features that enable improved performance, usability, and security. Highlights include IBM TS7700 Advanced Object Store, an all flash TS7770, grid resiliency enhancements, and Logical WORM retention.

By using the same hierarchical storage techniques, the TS7700 (TS7770 and TS7760) can also off load to object storage. Because object storage is cloud-based and accessible from different regions, the TS7700 Cloud Storage Tier support essentially allows the cloud to be an extension of the grid. As of this writing, the TS7700C supports the ability to off load to IBM Cloud® Object Storage, Amazon S3, and RSTOR.

This publication explains features and concepts that are specific to the IBM TS7700 as of release R5.2. The R5.2 microcode level provides IBM TS7700 Cloud Storage Tier enhancements, IBM DS8000® Object Storage enhancements, Management Interface dual control security, and other smaller enhancements. The R5.2 microcode level can be installed on the IBM TS7770 and IBM TS7760 models only.

Note: The latest Release 5.2 was split into two phases:

R5.2 Phase 1 (also referred to as and )
R5.2 Phase 2 ( and R)

TS7700 provides tape virtualization for the IBM z environment. Off loading to physical tape behind a TS7700 is used by hundreds of organizations around the world. Tape virtualization can help satisfy the following requirements in a data processing environment.

New and existing capabilities of the TS7700 5.2.2 release includes the following highlights:

Eight-way Grid Cloud, which consists of up to three generations of TS7700
Synchronous and asynchronous replication of virtual tape and TCT objects
Grid access to all logical volume and object data that is independent of where it exists
An all-flash TS7770 option for improved performance
Full Advanced Object Store Grid Cloud support of DS8000 Transparent Cloud Tier
Full AES256 encryption for data that is in-flight and at-rest
Tight integration with IBM Z® and DFSMS policy management
DS8000 Object Store AES256 in-flight encryption and compression
Regulatory compliance through Logical WORM and LWORM Retention support
Cloud Storage Tier support for archive, logical volume version, and disaster recovery
Optional integration with physical tape
16 Gb IBM FICON® throughput that exceeds 5 GBps per TS7700 cluster
Grid Resiliency Support with Control Unit Initiated Reconfiguration (CUIR) support
IBM Z hosts view up to 3,968 common devices per TS7700 grid
TS7770 Cache On-demand feature that is based capacity licensing
TS7770 support of SSD within the VED server
The TS7700T writes data by policy to physical tape through attachment to high-capacity, high-performance IBM TS1160, IBM TS1150, and IBM TS1140 tape drives that are installed in an IBM TS4500 or TS3500 tape library.

The TS7770 models are based on high-performance and redundant IBM POWER9TM technology. They provide improved performance for most IBM Z tape workloads when compared to the previous generations of IBM TS7700.

Lourie Goodall