> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Faracchio [mailto:brother AT SOCRATES.BERKELEY DOT EDU]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 8:05 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: TSM annoyances
>
>
>
>  We have a policy of only sending FULL tapes out and to mark them
> acc=offsite as they are being taken out of robot.  We got this working
> before DRM was OK so we've stuck with it and don't use DRM.
>

I'd get flayed alive if I tried this :-) It can take two weeks to fill an
LTO tape with our SAP/Oracle redo logs - but you need them to recover to
point of failure. These tapes tend to go off-site at about 10% (of 95 GB).
The reclaim starts just after they check out of the library. We're trying to
find an inexpensive way of moving these off-site electronically, but we run
from a low of 12 GB per day to an observed high of 45 GB per day.

And we don't use DRM either. I haven't been able to figure out why I'd want
it. We seem to be large enough and staffed well enough to do the prep work
ourselves, without being so large that DRM saves on workload.

> Its a little extra work but I like keeping the most recent
> PENDING offsite
> an extra week.  I plan (if ever) to use them as scratch in a
> DR.  Have you
> asked the question:  What will I use for scratches if I go
> offsite on a
> disaster??? :-)

Well -- I have 6 tapes pending/scratch in a worst case, immediately after
pulling the tapes to come back. In addition, I've got 10 tapes labeled and
initialized with a different volser range than our normal tapes sitting
off-site as a designated scratch pool. With nothing going off-site, 16 tapes
will last me three days (and I'll have 3 or 4 tapes per day scratch out as
well). Our D/R plan calls for ordering 100 new tapes on the first working
day of a disaster. I'm covered for five or six days, suffucient to keep us
going while waiting for UPS to bring the new tapes.

>
> why would you need to check them out after scratch? we just
> start using
> them!!  If there's more tapes then room in the robot then we
> just shelf
> them as scratches.  In or out of the box they're now scratch.


Yup. If there's no room in the library, just let them sit on the shelf. Plug
them in as space frees up.

Tom Kauffman
NIBCO, Inc