The VTL's that I have seen set the defaults to the size estimed to the drive as 
you suggest but all the ones I've seen you can later this.  For intance on our 
EMC CDL's emulating LTO 2 tape drives we set the volume limit to 50 GB.  
Further most have a initial setting and incremental growth.  Again on the CDL's 
the default is 5 GB.  So even though a VTL volume could grow up to 50 GB it 
starts up at 5 GB and grows in those increments.

So are you sure 2 GB is the limit or is that just the incremental growth?

"Wheelock, Michael D" <Michael.Wheelock AT INTEGRIS-HEALTH DOT COM> wrote:
Hi,

Most VTL's that I have encountered emulate a real tape drive (ie. Brand
and model) and thus their cartridge size is based on this (ie. 200 GB
for LTO1, etc). I would find out why this vtl has this limitation.

As to the db growth, others may have a better idea, but I have always
found that adding volumes wasn't nearly as big a deal as adding more
backed up data (ie. If I bring in 20 more servers with 10,000's each,
that overshadows anything else as far as the db is concerned).

Michael Wheelock
Integris Health

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Jon Evans
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 5:02 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Virtual tape libraries

I have been experimenting with a virtual tape library connected to TSM
(Windows 2k3 5.1.6.3 server)



All seems to work perfectly and TSM is none the wiser. However, The
maximum cartridge size in this virtual library is 2GB. I am currently
using LTO1 and getting upto 100 times this amount of data on one tape.

My database is 56GB and I currently have approx 600 volumes



My question is.. if I were to move to a virtual library and had to
increase the number of my volumes by up to 10 times

What impact would this have on my database ?



Thanks in advance



Jon Evans

Storage Consultant

KBR
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