Kurt, The way we've dealt with a mixed drive/media environment is to incorporate ACSLS and Gresham's DistribuTAPE to create separate tape pools and then within TSM create the separate libraries, device classes, storage pools, etc. We do that with LTO, STK 9940A, and STK 9940B drives.
Regards, Brian Brian Scott EDS - EOGDE GM Distributed Management Systems Engineering MS 3234 750 Tower Drive Troy, MI 48098 * phone: +01-248-265-4596 (8-365) * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Kurt Beyers [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 11:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Storagetek L180 with SDLT320 and DLT7000 drive Hello again, I'm still confused if a Storagetek library L180 with two SDLT drives and 1 DLT7000 drive is supported by TSM (server 5.2.x.y). I've been reading the manuals again and the TSM manual says: "While the Tivoli Storage Manager server now allows mixed device types in a library, the mixing of different generations of the same type of drive is still not supported. A new generation of media can be read and written to by new drives, but cannot be read by older drives. The previous generation of media usually can be read but cannot be written to by the new drives that support the new generation of media." But is a SDLT tape considered as a new generation derived from DLT7000 (SDLT can read only a DLTIV tape and a SDLT tape cannot be read by a DLT7000 drive)? The manual says you cannot mix DLT7000 and DLT8000 drives (both DLTIV media), neither can SDLT220 and SDLT320 be mixed. But is the same reasoning valid for DLTIV and SDLT320? Has anybody tried this already or does anybody knows an official answer from IBM itself? Or an answer from IBM directly? The library should be configured as follows: define library mixlib libtype=scsi define path server01 mixlib srctype=server desttype=library device=lb3.0.0.0 define drive mixlib dlt_mt4 define drive mixlib lto_mt5 define path server01 dlt_mt4 srctype=server desttype=drive library=mixlib device=mt4.0.0.0 define path server01 sdlt_mt5 srctype=server desttype=drive library=mixlib device=mt5.0.0.0 The type of the drives (DLT or SDLT is not yet specified anywhere), this is done in the device class definition: define devclass dlt_class devtype=dlt format=dlt35c library=mixlib define devclass sdlt_class devtype=dlt format=sdlt320c library=mixlib The format=drive cannot be used as the specified format is used by TSM to select a drive. And finally the storagepools are defined: define stgpool dlt_pool dlt_class maxscratch=20 define stgpool sdlt_pool sdlt_class maxscratch=20 But if you checkin or label a new tape, how does TSM knows that it is a DLT or SDLT tape? Or how does TSM knows when a new scratch volume is allocated it is a DLT scratch tape or a SDLT scratch tape? The storagepool is linked to DLT or SDLT through the device class. But in the drive definition or path definition, the type of drive (DLT or SDLT) is not mentioned. So am I missing a link here? Any answers, remarks or other insights are more than appreciated. Kurt
