OK, so "Emulated Tape" is emulating current mainframe tape on SCSI tape, while VTAPE is emulating mainframe tape on DASD. Those are clearly different.
I was confused by the reference to VSE Virtual Tape, which is also a matt er of emulating mainframe tape on DASD. From <http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zvse/products/vtape .html>: The VSE Virtual Tape Server provides the server part of the VSE Virtual T ape functionality. It is part of the VSE e-business connectors component (5686-CF7-35). A virtual tape is represented by a file in AWSTAPE format, which can be either a VSE/VSAM file or a file on any Java -enabled platform. News with VSE/ESA 2.7: Support for reading remote AWSTAPE images within a zip file (without unzi pping it manually). Support for emulating a PTF tape directly from a binary PTF job stream. Support for reading binary PTF job stream within a zip file (without unzi pping it manually). Support for executing actions on OPEN/CLOSE of tape images API for tape image implementations. API for actions on open/close of tape images.
