ADSM-L

Tapes - Scratch vs Private

1997-03-14 15:59:46
Subject: Tapes - Scratch vs Private
From: Larry Robertson <Larry_Robertson AT COMPUWARE DOT COM>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 16:59:46 EDT
Hello,

I am currently implementing ADSM for AIX on an RS/6000 using 3490 parallel
attached tape drives (Manual mount). (These drives are also accessible from our
mainframe MVS and VM systems). I know that I need to have a unique set of tapes
for use by ADSM but I'm not sure if it would be better to define them as scratch
or private. The ADMIN Guide shows that one of the benefits of scratch is that I
don't need to define each volume to ADSM using DEFINE VOLUME commands. It also
looks like it's better to use scratches when backing up the database otherwise
you need to explicitly list the tape volumes to use. This would be cumbersome to
schedule. What concerns me with using scratches is the possibility of writing
over a MVS tape by mistake.

Question #1: If I use scratch volumes, is there anything to prevent ADSM from
writing over tapes that don't belong to ADSM or will it write over any standard
labeled tape that it thinks is not in use?

Question #2: If I use private volumes and explicitly define them all to ADSM,
how can I automate the database backups?

I plan to run with log mode set to NORMAL so I should be able to schedule all
backups. The size of the database could require more than one tape for each
backup.

I would also appreciate any ideas and experiences regarding sharing tapes drives
with MVS.
Thanks in advance,

Larry Robertson
Technical Specialist
Compuware Corporation
larry_Robertson AT Compuware DOT com
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