Wanda, My solution isn't much better, but here goes: 1) Like you said, define 1 manual library, 1 device class, with 4 LTO4 drives, and get them all working and defined to the DR environment. 2) You will be using the IBM drives, of course, so I am presuming the IBM drivers will be installed by you or your DR vendor. 3) Start a TSM administrator window in -console mode, so you can see the tape mount requests. 4) When your tape operator sees a tape mount request, he puts the appropriate tape in the I/O door belonging to that tape drive's library. 5) You didn't say if you were Unix, Linux, or Windows. I will explain it as if it is AIX, and you can transpose. From a Unix shell window, your tape operator uses tapeutil, the linemode library manager that comes with the IBM drivers, to do the tape mounts for you. He can issue the commands to move the tape from the element number of the I/O door straight to the tape drive. 6) When he sees an unmount request, he issues the tapeutil command to move the tape from the drive to the I/O door, and puts the tape back in the stack.
If it were me tackling this one, I would write two short ksh scripts called "tape_mount" and "tape_unmount" where the tape operator just puts in which tape volser he is mounting, and which drive it should go in, and let the ksh scripts translate that into the actual device name, and tapeutil syntax, so there would be fewer mistakes. Also if it were me, I would build this experimentally using a tape library or libraries and drives while still back home, so I could build the script and debug it, then bring it with me to the DR exercise, and all I would have to change would be the /dev/smcX and /dev/rmtX device names, and start mounting tapes. Do you see any fatal flaws in this? It is a lot like your original idea, but typing the mounts and unmounts on the faceplate of four different TS3100's would drive me buggy. Hopefully this would be less tedious. Best Regards, John D. Schneider The Computer Coaching Community, LLC Office: (314) 635-5424 Toll Free: (866) 796-9226 Cell: (314) 750-8721 -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [ADSM-L] Desperation, DR, and four TS3100 libraries... From: Wanda Prather <wprat...@jasi.com> Date: Thu, July 09, 2009 8:33 pm To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU I'm drawing a blank here, any suggestions welcomed. I have a TSM customer who makes their copypool tapes using a TS3200 with LTO4 drives. The TS3200 is a rack-mounted, 2 drive, 40-mumble slot standard ASCII library. No issues. One copy pool, tapes vaulted and sent offsite. They want to go to a commercial DR vendor site and do a DR test next week. The commercial DR vendor, unbelievably, has no multi-drive LTO4-capable libraries. Instead, they want us to use 4 (count 'em, four) TS3100 libraries. The TS3100 is a rack-mounted, 1 drive, 20-mumble slot standard ASCII library. There's only 1 copy pool, so all tapes were created on the same device class. Ignoring the which-carts-would-go-in-which-library issue, I can't have a device class pointing to 4 libraries. And, the TS3100 is built in such a way that unlike a TS3500, you can't open the doors and access the drives for manual mounting. (I'd be happy to pull the covers off and try it, ignoring any warranties I might void, but I doubt the vendor will let me attack the thing with a screwdriver/wrench/hacksaw.) If I put all the carts in one TS3100 that will work, but that leaves me only 1 drive to restore all the clients, and they won't likely get done in the desired time window. The only thing I can think of to use all 4 drives, is to define those four TS3100's as 1 manual library with 4 manual drives, and use the front panel of each TS3100 to move tapes from the I/O slot to the drive when TSM requests a mount. (Actually the FIRST thing I thought of, was "cancel the DR contract, this is nonsense". But my customer isn't convinced yet...) Anybody got a better solution? I've already tried a margarita, it didn't help.... W
