Multi-threading backups

I'm trying to speed up my backups.  We perform nightly SAVLIBs.  I've
customized the SAVLIB *NONSYS portion of the GO SAVE option 21 for weekend
saves.  We're using four fiber-attached 3590E tape drives.  To speed the
processes I run four concurrent SAVLIB jobs to keep all four fast tape
drives busy.  Ultimately the run time boils down to the job length for a
SAVLIB of the largest library (around 650 GB in a mix of huge single-member
tables and high-volume multi-member files) to a 3590.  

I'm sure I could shave a few hours off the process if I were able to easily
stream the largest libraries to two or more tape drives concurrently.

I've read about media definitions for assigning several tape devices to one
logical device.  It didn't seem very easy to set up, and I was worried about
my ability to recover these types of saves to DR systems with different
3590E configurations.

Is anyone doing anything like this?  I've never looked at layered backup
products.  Does BRMS facilitate such a solution?

-Jim

James P. Damato
Manager - Systems Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>