How to reclaim tapes from an old TSM system to be used in a New TSM system

[Rigmarol]

I've been tasked with taking over for someone who has retired. I have only had a few weeks of training on TSM but I'm learning fast.

I have inherited the following scenario; We are doing away with an older TSM server (hardware) and have brought online a new TSM server. Both are share the same tape library. The old TSM is no longer the primary system, and is no longer running scheduled jubs. Someone else made the change-over to the new TSM server.

I am able to add new clients, make scheduled BUs, reports are working and so on. All is working fine.


What I need help on is how do I get back all the tapes the OLD TSM system used and introduce them to the NEW TSM system?

I DO NOT NEED THE DATA on these old tapes. The person who retired showed me a lot of things but I just don't remember how to do this if she even showed me how.

Thanks for any help.

 

[marclant]

If you plan to just decommision the old TSM Server, you just need to check them out of the old, and re-label the tapes in the new environment, and you are good to go.

The new server is unaware of those tapes at the moment, so you will have no problem labelling them. When you label them, it overwrites the data and ready to use on the new server.

 

[Rigmarol]

Thanks for the fast reply!
Yes, we are decommissioning the OLD Server and no data needs to be retained on the tapes it has in the same Library as the NEW Server.

Let's see if I'm on the right course here:
1. Checkout tapes using the OLD Server or retrieve unneeded tapes from offsite (vault).

2. Checkin volumes?

2. re-label using the NEW Server.

If those are the steps then I'm good (I think), I can look up the syntax.

I just need to get the steps and commands clear.

 

[marclant]

2. Checkin volumes?

2. re-label using the NEW Server.

That is actually combined in one step. You lable and checkin in one command on the new server, the same as if they were brand new scratch tapes you just bought

 

[Rigmarol]

Great! Thanks for the assist. I'll give it a try as soon as I get some tapes back from the Vault first. If that works out, I'll begin reclaiming tapes from the shared library.

 

[Rigmarol]

I got the permission to reclaim these tapes so I went ahead and did the following:

I loaded just one tape for experimentation and the library took it and stuffed it into a free slot.
I then did the following:

>label libvolume TL3584 search=bulk labelsource=barcode checkin=scratch overwrite=yes
>q request
>reply (provided number)

The process ended right away with no messages.

>q libvol did not show the tape I put in at all (Library did nothing with it but put it in a free slot)

I examined the activity log and found the following:

ANR1436E Device configuration file /tsm/cfg/devconfig02 cannot be opened.

I checked with our Linux Admin and he says that I have full rights to the file.

However, looking up the ANR1436E error says that the "SERVER cannot open the file name specified."

Any thoughts?
Thanks.

 

[marclant]

Login to Linux with the same ID that you used to start the TSM Server, then try to read /tsm/cfg/devconfig02:

cat /tsm/cfg/devconfig02

Also try to create a file there:

ls > /tsm/cfg/testwrite

 

[Rigmarol]

I found part of the problem; I was given incorrect information on which server I was supposed to be logging in to. I did not have the rights the Admin said I did because I was not on the server HE was looking at. I changed servers and I now have the proper rights to the file above.

Now when I run the commands to recover my tapes I'm getting the following in the activity log:

ANR8816E LABEL LIBVOLUME: Volume A00239L4 in library TL3584 cannot be labeled because it is currently defined in a storage pool or in the volume history file.

I get this for the handful of tapes I've called back from our off-site vaulting service. These are from the OLD TSM server and can be erased. I have over a hundred of these I want to use the same way.

I thought the command I used would do the trick but aparently I'm still off somewhere.

I really appreciate the assistance.

 

[Rigmarol]

I didn't find any solutions in my searches so I finally called IBM for help.
I was provided with an "undocumented" solution which seemed to work at first but has not been successful thus far.
I'm sure we'll get to the end with a successful solution but we're not there so far.
I will try to post what the ultimate fix was after it happens.

Thanks for the attempt to help.

 

[marclant]

It's possible at some points those tapes were used for a dbsnapshot or an export and still in the volhistory.

You can confirm that with:

select * from volhistory where volume_name='A00239L4' order by date_time desc fetch first row only

You can delete them with the delvolhist command: HELP DEL VOLHIST

There's a slimmer chance it belongs to a storage pool, but you can check with Q VOL A00239L4 to see. If it's already defined in a storage pool, you have two options. Since you used it on another server, whatever data was there initially was likely overwritten. First checkin the tape as private:
- option 1: audit the tape with fix=yes to mark all the files damaged. Now, if by any those files exist in the copypool, you could restore them if you want them
- option 2: delete the volume with discard=yes and it will return to scratch and if there was a copy in the copypool, that one will be deleted too.

 

[Rigmarol]

Thank you, IBM's solution also has me working with VOLHIST. I think we're almost there.
My Systems Operator made a mistake and pulled out a tape I didn't ask him to pull and now the Library is having trouble syncing the database. I think I have that fixed now and can continue with the original task of getting tapes reclaimed from the old TSM system. (fingers crossed)