ADSM-L

Scratch tape question

1997-04-23 10:53:05
Subject: Scratch tape question
From: Tom Denier <tom AT STAFF.UDC.UPENN DOT EDU>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 10:53:05 -0400
My site is running a Version 2 ADSM server under AIX. We have three
3490E drives with Automatic Cartridge Loaders. We do not have a robot
tape library. We are considering using scratch tapes. Version 2 does
an impressively thorough job of protecting its users from inadvertently
writing on tapes containing valid data written by ADSM. As far as I can
tell, it does absolutely nothing to keep users from overwriting tapes
written by other systems that have compatable tape volumes housed in
the same machine room as the ADSM server.

At our site it would be sufficient to have ADSM reject volumes with
volume serial numbers starting with any characters other than "40".
I have searched the ADSM documentation in hopes of finding something
along the lines of a "set scratchvolprefix" command, but have found
nothing of the sort. Have I missed an existing server feature that
would perform a check for scratch volume serial numbers having a
specified prefix?

Version 2 provides an interface for external media management programs.
It would be easy for such a program to enforce rules about the form
of volume serial numbers. How difficult would it be to write such a
program and have it take advantage of the Automatic Cartridge Loaders
(in particular, to have it pull scratch tapes from the lower slots
in the magazines)? It looks to me as if an external media management
program for existing drives could be put into service by defining
a new library and updating the devclass involved to refer to the
new library. Is this correct?
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