Why/How do tapes become marked unavailable? (not how to return them to RW status)

[wirb]

Greetings, all,



I'm new to TSM. We're running 5.2.2 on Win2K using a 3583 library with 2 drives.



This is question is for my own information. I haven't been able to find it in any field guides nor has it turned up in searches on IBM's Tivoli-specific Web pages.



Why and how do tapes become marked unavailable? I know how to return them to R/W status, although it can be a pain to track down the specific volume coz I don't have all the command line syntax available, so I have to go via the Web admin GUI and look in the sequential storage. And this brings up a number of related questions:



Is there a way to configure TSM to send an alert when this happens, so a) I don't have to wade through the way-too-thorough log to find it and b) avoid getting "volume <volnam> is unavailable" messages when TSM tries to do a reclaimation or other process on that volume?



Is there a command-line command to track down the volume marked unavailable so I don't have to drill down through the GUI?



Is there a way to configure the log so it doesn't register EVERY TIME I open a GUI session, or make a change to a scheduled command (I've had to do a lot of adjusting of start and stop times), or register every time I issue a query or script from the command line?



My thanks to any who can answer.

 

[heada]

There are several reasons why tapes leave the read-write status. The most common (at my site anyway) is a library issue. We have a shared 3494 tape library. If all the drives are in use and a lib-client asks for a tape to be mounted, the lib-master has to wait until a drive frees up. If the mount-wait is set lower then it takes to mount that tape then the lib-client will mark the tape unavailable.



A tape can go to unavailable when the library has an issue and doesn't put the tape away correctly or can't mount it correctly.



The easiest way to find a tape thats in unavailable status: q vol "*" access=unavailable

The easiest way to move it back to read-write: update vol "*" access=readwrite whereaccess=unavailable



You can also do it based on stgpool by adding a "wherestgpool=<name>" to the second command.



-Aaron

 

[wirb]

Aaron, thanks, this explanation fits perfectly.



As to wading through the log, guess I'll just have to re-visit Perl (it's been years) and work up some scrpts to process it for what I want. Anyone out there done something similar so I don't have to re-invent the wheel?



Oh, and now working my way through the TSM Administrator's Rreference for command-line syntax. javascript: x()

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