Migrating from LTO4 to LTO5 in the same Library

[totallossie]

Hi group,

We are running out of space in our library rapidly and we are going to upgrade from lto4 tapes to lto5 tapes. We have still have 6 LTO4 drives in our library and we have 12 LTO5 Drives.

Preferably I would not like to create a new virtual library, because that would mean that I have to re-allocated slots reguarly, and for what I am told you have to restart TSM every time after you reallocate slots from one virtual library to another.

I also would prefer to keep all the drives in the library for als long as possible, to prevent performance issues during the migration. We have to migrate more than 3 petabyte, while the library is heavily used during most of the day 24/7 (the library hosts video files for a broadcasting company).

I will create a new storage pool for the migrated data, but I want to make sure that the lto4 drives won't try to mount lto5 tapes. The devclass definitions dont allow you to specify a devtype for lto4 or lto5, just lto.

Does anyone know how to separate the the drives on a storage pool leve. Or maybe someone has a great Idea that I haven't thought of?

Aris

[DazRaz]

I have done this for LTO3 and LTO5 drives in the same library. 4 LTO3 drives and 2 LTO5 drives. The devclasses look like this.

tsm: CHCTSM01>q devclass ltotape f=d
             Device Class Name: LTOTAPE
        Device Access Strategy: Sequential
            Storage Pool Count: 7
                   Device Type: LTO
                        Format: ULTRIUM3C
         Est/Max Capacity (MB): 1,638,400.0
                   Mount Limit: 4
              Mount Wait (min): 60
         Mount Retention (min): 5
                  Label Prefix: ADSM
                       Library: PROD_LIB
                     Directory:
                   Server Name:
                  Retry Period:
                Retry Interval:
                        Shared:
            High-level Address:
              Minimum Capacity:
                          WORM: No
              Drive Encryption: Allow
               Scaled Capacity:
Last Update by (administrator): PCADMDR
         Last Update Date/Time: 12/24/10   11:53:14
 
tsm: CHCTSM01>
 
tsm: CHCTSM01>q devclass lto5 f=d
             Device Class Name: LTO5
        Device Access Strategy: Sequential
            Storage Pool Count: 2
                   Device Type: LTO
                        Format: ULTRIUM5C
         Est/Max Capacity (MB): 3,686,400.0
                   Mount Limit: 2
              Mount Wait (min): 60
         Mount Retention (min): 5
                  Label Prefix: ADSM
                       Library: PROD_LIB
                     Directory:
                   Server Name:
                  Retry Period:
                Retry Interval:
                        Shared:
            High-level Address:
              Minimum Capacity:
                          WORM: No
              Drive Encryption: Allow
               Scaled Capacity:
Last Update by (administrator): PCADMDR
         Last Update Date/Time: 12/15/10   18:55:58
 
tsm: CHCTSM01>

You will need to create a devclass for LTO5. It won't try to load LTO5 tapes into LTO4 drives. If you want to prevent LTO4 tapes in LTO5 drives, set the devclass mount limit to 6.