The Tape Library Simulator (TLS) Utility lets you create a virtual device on a hard disk or on any mounted volume on the Remote Media Agent. This virtual device emulates a SCSI device. Backup Exec treats this virtual device the same as any real device.

A simulated tape library is similar to the backup-to-disk feature. However, you cannot copy a backup on a simulated tape library to a backup-to-disk folder. Nor can you copy a backup-to-disk folder to a simulated tape library.

When you create a simulated tape library, you specify the number of slots that are allocated to this virtual library. Also, you set the location or path for the simulated tape library. The utility sets the tape capacity to 100 GBs. You can specify up to 50 slots.

You must have a minimum of 500 MB of available space on your Linux server, including both hard disk space and flash drives, when you use the TLS Utility. Otherwise, jobs fail with an end of media error.

A simulated tape library emulates an Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) media type and has the AIT media type label.

The simulated tape library is like any other type of media, so you can inventory, catalog, erase, verify, and restore it. The media for the simulated tape library are created when you create the simulated tape library. The TLS Utility automatically creates a bar code label for each media to ensure that each media has a unique name. You cannot rename these bar code labels.

You can add the simulated tape library to a device pool but not to a cascaded drive pool. By default, Backup Exec does not include a simulated tape library in the All Devices pool.