I have placed a call today with IBM concerning the missing tapes. It 
took
nearly a month of carefully monitoring the drm steps before we could confirm
our suspicions. We use a simple process of doing a  ' q drm *
wherestate=vaultretrieve ' to print a list of tapes that are supposed to
come back from the vault. The next step is to move the vault retrieve state
tapes to the onsite retrieve state with a move ' drm * wherestate=vaultr
tostate=onsiter'.  At this step we 'lose' a tape. What happens is all the
vault retrieve tapes are correctly selected and moved -- along with one
extra one. Since the 'extra' tape was not on the vault retrieve list, the
tape does not get retrieved from the vault. The tape is gone from the drm
database and is not found until a physical  inventory is performed. In our
case, it was a tape from the copy storage pool, not a database backup.
        By comparing the drm listings before and after the drm move command we 
were
actually able catch and document the error. It took a lot of patience
waiting for the error. But judging from the number of 'hung' tapes that have
come back after previous inventories, we have been 'lucky' to avoid the
problem for so long.
        My theory is that the 'extra' tape is one that has expired its pending
period and has changed its state internally from vault to vault retrieve but
does not show up as a tape in a vault retrieve state when listed. However,
the move drm command is able to 'see' this particular tape along with the
other tapes in the vault retrieve state and thus causing the disappearing
tape.
        I suggest to those of you experiencing this anomaly to invest the time 
in
listening to IBM's classical on-hold music and let ADSM support know that
you too are having tapes disappear.

Kenneth Bury
Carolinas HealthCare System

kbury AT carolinas DOT org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU]On Behalf Of
> Virginia Hysock
> Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 16:06
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: DRM Losing Tapes
>
>
> AIX 3.1.2.20 Server w/IBM 3494 ATL
>
> Hello all,
>
>      I have noted that there was quite a bit of discussion on the list a
> month or so ago about DRM processes for returning tapes from the vault
> losing tapes, primarily due to parameters around the DRMEXPIREDAYS,
> REUSEDELAY and deleting of the volhistory db backup days, etc.  I also saw
> one note that indicated the user was going to open an incident with IBM on
> it, but I found nothing in searching the APAR files on IBMLINK.
> Can anyone
> provide me with information on a resolution to this?  I am in the
> testing/ready to implement DRM stage right now (with an implementation
> deadline of 6/1 - yikes!), and have found a similar problem in performing
> the QUERY DRMEDIA * WHERESTATE=VAULTRETRIEVE.  On 5/17 the list produced
> one tape, S00161 (which was not returned, since I was only testing); on
> 5/25 the list produced one tape, S00063 (what happened to
> S00161?), on 5/26
> it produced one other tape, S00065 (no S00161 or S00063).
>
>      My DRMEXPIREDAYS parameter is set to 30 days, as is the REUSEDELAY
> period, and the DELETE VOLHIST was set to 30 - but I just changed it to 40
> based on some of the suggestions in the list notes.  Should I be okay now?
> I also saw one suggestion saying that if you are using DRM, you should not
> be deleting your volume history db backups.  Can anyone confirm this?
> HELP!!
>
>                          Ginny
>