Patent ID: 8589648

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a replicated virtual cartridge in a media vault of a first virtual tape library disposed at a first site due to a replication mapping between the first virtual tape library and a second virtual tape library disposed at a second site; associating the replicated virtual cartridge with a shadow library to cause the replicated virtual cartridge to be visible to a backup application; and using the backup application to access the virtual cartridge via the shadow library to perform a copy operation on the virtual cartridge, wherein: the first virtual tape library comprises a mirrored version of the second virtual tape library due to the replication mapping, a primary virtual cartridge is created on the second virtual tape library to cause the replicated virtual cartridge to appear in the first virtual tape library due to the replication mapping, and the replicated virtual cartridge is received into the media vault of the first virtual tape library due to the primary virtual cartridge being moved into a media vault of the second virtual tape library and the replication mapping.