I assume you're talking about off-site storage of tapes for disaster
recovery.  We'll be going production this week with our system using ADSM.
 Our data center already has procedures in place for our mainframe data
where there are 3 sets of carts containing disaster backup tapes, so we
decided to conform to this.  Using 3 sets of backup tapes means at least one
set is offsite at all times (when the oldest set is being returned and
they're picking up the most recent set they are both onsite, of course).  We
have 3 copypools in which we've defined volumes (3590's) and we rotate
between the 3 for the 'backup stgpool' commands.  We decided to not use
scratch tapes because the operators prefer to not have to pull tapes.  They
simply take the cases containing the ADSM tapes out of the carts, mount the
ones that are called for, put the tapes back into the cases and the cases
back into the carts.

We don't have a tape library, so this works well for us since it doesn't
require the operators to know which tapes are scratch or to then pull the
appropriate tapes to put them in the cart for offsite storage.  If you still
want to use scratch tapes or you don't want to set aside groups of tapes
(and monitor them to see when you need to add more), then I would recommend
you purchase DRM (Disaster Recovery Manager).  That makes it much easier to
track the tapes with commands that are provided just for that.

I would be interested to hear how other people do it to see if we can find a
better way, although this appears to be working fine so far.

Tina Hilton
Thomson Consumer Electronics
 ----------
From: Tony Arsneault
To: Multiple recipients of list ADSM-L
Subject: off site tape management
Date: Tuesday, January 07, 1997 10:49AM


     We are a new user of ADSM and are currently in a pilot stage of
     implementation, soon to go into production.  I would like to get a
     feel for how other users are handling off-site tape management.  We
     are running ADSM on an AIX box with 2 7331 tape libraries attached.

     What reports or queries do you run to determine which tapes need to be
     moved off-site or returned? Please feel free to provide as many
     details of your tape management procedures, any tips or hints will be
     helpful as we develop our own procedure.

     Thank You,

     Tony Arsneault
     ARSNEAUT AT OAKWOOD DOT ORG