How to replace damaged tape

[foobar]

Hello,

I'm a newbie with TSM. So , sorry if the question looks obvious... I'm trying to replace a damaged tape (volume set to Unavailable) in my library by a new one, but I'm not sure on how to proceed. Here are my guesses from the TSM documentation:

1. I check out my volume with the checkout command
2. I remove the barcode from the old tape and put it on my new tape
3. I check in the new tape with the checkin command
4. It works

Is that correct? Do I need to move my data before removing the old tape? Is it better to delete the tape, then create a new one with a new barcode?

Thanks a lot for your answers

 

[moon-buddy]

Your procedure will make TSM think that there is still data on the new tape that you just checked in. When it looks for it, this is where your trouble begins.

The correct way is to marked the damaged tape as "destroyed" and then reconstruct the data on that tape. If this is the online pool, you will need the offsite tapes (I assume you do have them!) to reassemble the data.

You have to create a new tape label and not use the old one.

 

[mikeatkc]

There are a couple of ways:

update vol VOLNAME access=reado
move data VOLNAME
update vol VOLNAME access=destroy

The above commands move the data from the damaged tape to another tape (provided the damaged tape can still be read), and then mark the tape as "destroy." If you want to reuse the label you have to tell TSM to check it in as scratch at a later time, etc. Our practice here is to remove the damaged tape and not reused the barcode, hence, the tapes with higher number tend to be newer tapes, and so on.

restore vol VOLNAME

The above command will attempts to rebuild the data on the damaged tape onto another tape (and will use other tapes, including offsite tapes if it cannot read the damaged tape). Afterwards, TSM will automatically mark the damaged tape as "destroy."

If you can read the damaged tape, I recommend the first option since TSM will not need to spit out messages in your activity log (which you need to search for) to retrieve offsite tapes.

Regards,

Mike

 

[foobar]

Thank you! Things are clearer now! The problem is that we have a big shortage of barcode at the moment. So, I'm oblige to re-use some of them, while waiting for new barcodes (we need to retrieve the original provider). I try to limit that though: keep a trace of re-used barcodes is a bit difficult.

 

[syntax44]

Detailed instructions can be found in this IBM Technote:

'Replacing a damaged primary storage pool volume'
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=663&uid=swg21219227

Consideration in addition to this Technote can be found here:

http://tsmblog.org/serendipity/inde...ng-a-damaged-primary-storage-pool-volume.html

Hope this helps.