Matthew,

[Sorry to folow up so quickly; I had another thought...]

> I would favour the "increase target sessions" option.  This would tend
> to leave some of your drives free.  You could then leave one drive
> disabled (to ensure that it was free for when you needed it) and enable
> it when required.  The downsides are that the enable/disable steps are
> manual, and that something else can jump in and steal your drive if you
> are not quick enough.

There is another aspect of this that you (and many others) might find
useful...

If you have plenty of unused "target sessions" available in your
jukebox and configure (or reconfigure) one device to have "target
sessions" of 1, nsrd will tend to avoid using that device.

This is probably a side effect of the algorithm that nsrd uses to pick
devices (my guess is that selects devices that have more target
sessions available ahead of those that have less).

So... if you have a device that you want to free up for some reason
(like you want to use it for something else, or its performance has
fallen through the floor because it has multiple nsrmmd's associated
with it...) you set its target sessions to 1 and wait.  Nsrd will avoid
starting new sessions on that device and eventually it will be idle and
available.

Or, if you have a device that you want to be never used you would
preconfigure its target sessions to 1.

You probably don't want to overdo the target sessions on your other
drives; there might be undesirable flow-on side effects (such as
reduced performance).

George.
--
George Scott           George.Scott AT its.monash DOT edu
Systems Programmer, IT Services, Monash University

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