How to tell TSM what tapes I'm removing

DMobley232

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PREDATAR Control23

Hello.
We have a TSM on Linux that connected to our spectra tape library. The library is full and I'm trying to figure everything out to eject/replace tapes.
I think I have about 85% figured out, however I'm told that one step i'm missing is I probably need to tell TSM that tapes that we are going to be checking out. How do I do that. In our environment, the way it was setup is that we have to actually eject from the Tape GUI due to the fact we don't have enough slots, however I guess I need to tell TSM before I physically eject them?
 
PREDATAR Control23

Bad idea to remove primary tapes from the library. It will be cheaper in the long run to add a frame to the library than for your boss to pay you to become part of the tape library by having to add/remove tapes from a shelf to the library constantly. If you have a client restore, you will likely have to checkout tapes in order to checkin the required tape. Running reclamation will be near impossible. If you don't run reclamation you waste space which means you will need to checkout even more tapes.

Anyway, to remove tapes from TSM, use the CHECKOUT LIBVOLUME command. HELP CHECKOUT LIBVOLUME for syntax. If you put remove=bulk, they will be removed from the library for you, you won't need to use the library GUI.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Thank you for the info. I will pass that along. At this time our Library if completely full, and all the tapes need to be removed and new ones put back in so that backups can continue.
 
PREDATAR Control23

I don't envy you. Before you do that, do you know if Expiration and Reclamation run successfully daily? Are your retention policies longer than the business requirements? Those are all things that could make you use more tapes than needed.
 
PREDATAR Control23

I will have to do some research as I don't know those answers. This is a different setup as this is being used by our seismic department, and they manually trigger backups of their data to this system, there are no automated processes that I'm aware of that do any nightly, daily, monthly type backups, but I will do some research.
 
PREDATAR Control23

The automated processes like expiration and reclamation would be on the server, regardless how client backups are done. You can query the summary table to when they last ran:
select activity,max(start_time) from summary where activity='EXPIRATION' or activity='RECLAMATION' and successful='YES' group by activity
 
PREDATAR Control23

I tried to run command, maybe I typed it wrong. See screenshot
 

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PREDATAR Control23

Should I run some query first to see what the expiration and reclamation settings are set to? Maybe it was setup this way for a reason?
 
PREDATAR Control23

Should I run some query first to see what the expiration and reclamation settings are set to? Maybe it was setup this way for a reason?
The only valid reason to not run expiration and reclamation is in an environment where archiving data forever. Like medical or legal records. There are no settings for expiration, you set it to run, or not. For reclamation, you can set the threshold at the storage pool level. It must be set at 100% if it never runs. You can chose the threshold you want.

If you run this query, you can see how many volumes you can reclaim:
select stgpool_name,volume_name,pct_reclaim from volumes where pct_reclaim>50 order by stgpool_name,pct_reclaim

For every 2 volume on that list, you get a scratch tape because reclamation will combine two half full tape onto a new tape, giving you back the two original as scratch.
 
PREDATAR Control23

The only valid reason to not run expiration and reclamation is in an environment where archiving data forever. Like medical or legal records. There are no settings for expiration, you set it to run, or not. For reclamation, you can set the threshold at the storage pool level. It must be set at 100% if it never runs. You can chose the threshold you want.

If you run this query, you can see how many volumes you can reclaim:
select stgpool_name,volume_name,pct_reclaim from volumes where pct_reclaim>50 order by stgpool_name,pct_reclaim

For every 2 volume on that list, you get a scratch tape because reclamation will combine two half full tape onto a new tape, giving you back the two original as scratch.
Thanks for the info. I think we fall into that environment. This is Seismic Data that the seismic tech told me that we archive data forever, and never delete.
I will try your query and see what happens.
Thanks.
 
PREDATAR Control23

If that's the case, then it makes sense. You will need to keep adding tapes as needed, which means removing old tapes. In the event you need to do a restore, it will fail if the data is on a tape that is checked out. You will have to check it in for the restore to work. Other than that, no real issues.
 
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