mtlib -l -q L | grep 3592
#IBM 3584, A.K.A. IBM TS3500#
/opt/java6/bin/java -jar TS3500CLI.jar -a -viewCleaningCartridges -u -p | awk -F',' '{total=total+$9;}END{print total}'
Insert it into your own morning TSM report script! ;-)
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Monday, March 25, 2013
Thursday, January 19, 2012
TSM Device Handling in Windows
I have to say that TSM on Windows is good for small to medium size solutions and I'm not ANTI-Windows. I just cringe when dealing with devices in Windows. I hate its driver handling and most of all I hate how Windows presents library and tape drives. So I was working with a TSM server where the tape library would not initialize. It was an older SCSI library, not Fiber. I tried restarting the library, the TSM server, reloading drivers, and updating the drivers and nothing worked.
Duh! <Head Slap!!!>
That's because on the initial reboot that caused the library to stop communicating the device ID's changed. So the library went from LB1.0.0.2 to LB1.0.0.3. Nobody touched the SCSI card or library but the device definition changed! Seriously? All the drives changed to mtX.X.X.3 also. Now I don't use Windows all that much but luckily I remembered the TSMDLST program that is installed with the TSM server. It's under C:\Porgram Files\tivoli\tsm\console and will pull the information from Windows for you in a readable format. So next time your library goes offline make sure you use it to compare the device definitions and serials with what is defined in TSM. It will save you a lot of time and headache. You can find more information on issues like this here.
Duh! <Head Slap!!!>
That's because on the initial reboot that caused the library to stop communicating the device ID's changed. So the library went from LB1.0.0.2 to LB1.0.0.3. Nobody touched the SCSI card or library but the device definition changed! Seriously? All the drives changed to mtX.X.X.3 also. Now I don't use Windows all that much but luckily I remembered the TSMDLST program that is installed with the TSM server. It's under C:\Porgram Files\tivoli\tsm\console and will pull the information from Windows for you in a readable format. So next time your library goes offline make sure you use it to compare the device definitions and serials with what is defined in TSM. It will save you a lot of time and headache. You can find more information on issues like this here.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Scalar i2000 Frustrations
So for any Scalar i2000 users out there, why is it at every D.R. test I have to reboot the library to get the robot to discover correctly? Is there an inherent issue with the internal switch? I have done 3 D.R. tests with i2000's and each time I have to get the D.R. site people to reboot the darn thing before I can detect the robot. What's up with that? How do those of you who use them daily like them? I get a bad taste in my mouth when I hear I have to use one. At least it had IBM drives in it.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
ACSLS Label Problem
For the first time in many many months our ACSLS library has experienced some problems and one that is perplexing is a LABEL LIBVOLUME issue. When a LABEL LIBVOL is run it is coming back with a SUCCESSFUL result code but the tape does not get checked into the library. I do have CHECKIN=SCRATCH in the command, but that part of the proceedure is failing due to the library stating it is unable to open the drive on eject (the tape does eject, however). So the tape does get labeled but not checked in. When I run a CHECKIN LIBVOL command the tapes are then found and listed as in the LIBVOL inventory. Anyone every seen this? I am having the tape drive looked at, but TSM returning the process as SUCCESSFUL is disconcerting. This is definitely a TSM flaw that I plan to address with support.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
ACSLS Revisited
I have now been using an ACSLS enabled SUN/STK Powderhorn library with 30 LTO-3 drives for 18 months now and I have done a complete turn-around on my attitude towards the product. Although ACSLS is not as easy to initially work with as a web based interface, once you get the hang of the product it acutally is quite easy to work with. I have had one issue where we had to restart the ACSLS server, but other than that this library and ACSLS have been a lot less of an issue than any of the 3584's I worked with at IBM (don't worry I still love the 3584's). This library, although old, is very robust and has been a solid performer. So I must openly state I am not an ACSLS hater as I once was, and I would like to see some web implimentation, but overall it's turned out to be a solid product to work with.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
SpectraLogic Library Review
We recently acquired a Spectra Logic T950 library for one of our data centers and I thought I'd let you all know how it's been performing. Since I was with IBM previously my only experience was with STK's (which we were trying to push out the customers door ASAP) and IBM hardware. I can say I was no fan of the STK L700 and being an IBM'er at the time I touted the 3584 and 3494's like they walked on water (they don't). We frequently had to have maintenance on our IBM libraries. Was it due to the fact we were collocating over 2500 clients and mounts were through the roof? Probably!
The data center I worked at with IBM had a secondary library room that housed the 8 libraries (some were for mainframes) and tape shelves. The room was running out of floor space to accommodate another library or expansions to existing ones. This is where SpectraLogic has IBM and the competition beat, hands down. A single T950 frame can house up to 24 drives and a max of 950 tapes with a frame H 78.77 in, W 30.63 in, D 43.21 in (H 200.1 cm, W 77.8 cm, D 109.8 cm). That's a little taller but less deep than an IBM TS3500 frame at 70.9"H x 30.8"W x 47.7"D (1800 mm x 782 mm x 1212 mm), with the IBM L frame handling a max of only 12 drives and 287 tapes.
How does SpectraLogic get such great density? They go vertical with a twist. SpectraLogic libraries use "TeraPacks" that are 10 tape chassis that load the tapes so the barcode are vertical not horizontal like IBM and most other libraries. When the library needs a tape its robot removes the TeraPack and then the gripper mechanism grabs the tape. I can hardly tell if it adds more than a second or two to the mount time, but even if it does the density gain negates the ever so slightly increased mount time.
I could go on an on and mention every little thing that I like about this library, but one of the coolest features is the ability to add SATA RXT portable RAID media, making the T950 VTL capable. The RXT media (which stands for RAID eXchangeable TeraPack) fits in the SpectraLogic half inch tape drive openings and is composed of multiple SATA disks sealed in a enclosure capable of taking rugged handling with built in shock dampening technology. The TeraPacks range in size from 2TB to 1TB, but I'm sure you will see larger sizes in the very near future. The RXT media is compatible with all major backup applications and operating systems.
The final item that sealed the deal was of course price. This library came in at a great price point, lower than IBM and Sun by quite a bit. This, added up with all the other features/benefits it offers in expandability, made it a win/win. "So, how has it performed?" You ask. Well, so far it has performed above my expectations. I have shed my IBM favoritism and seen it for what it was "stubbornness". I would highly recommend considering SpectraLogic the next time you seek to buy new or refresh old equipment. They definitely have the features everyone is looking for available in their libraries, and with data center space at a premium you can count on the T950 to give you the capacity you need in less space than competing libraries.
***UPDATE***
The mount time is a a lit more excessive than thought. Because of the TeraPack having to be removed, then the tape grabbed and placed in the drive, then the terapack replaced; the mount times are quite a bit longer when you have a VERY busy queue. I think SpectraLogic needs to speed this process up somehow. I must say if they can speed it up the overall library density is great. It would be cool if there was some way they could utilize a tool that grouped all scratch together and tapes that are most frequently mounted. Almost like a tape slot reclamation. It might speed things along when say 5 systems are all waiting for scratch. I need to research this a little more. I'll see if I can get feedback from SpectraLogic.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Audit Library Issue
I had something crazy happen this weekend with our STK L700. It somehow ended up needing an audit of the library, but when we would run the audit it would fail. Failure of a command I can live with but there was no supporting messages to explain the cause of the failure. The library was rebooted multiple times, but the audit still was failing. Finally my resourceful manager Steve ran an audit library with the PVR and MMS flags and the audit completed successfully. The one thing it could have been was from a stuck tape in a tape drive, but why no context message to explain the failure? We had deleted the drive and the path and the tape should have been removed on the first audit since it could no longer be seen.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Tivoli Storage Manager 5.2 and Capacity on Demand gotcha.
A customer recently commissioned a new frame for their 3584 library and installed some new tape drives. TSM was left running under the assumption that paths and drives could be taken offline whilst work was performed on the library to ensure availability to backup to the disk storage pools.
Unfortunately this is not the case when you are commissioning additional storage slots (frames or capacity on demand).
The first indication that something was astray was that after the paths and drives online was that the the inability to check in any more tapes as the library was still showing that it was full.
The new frame allowed for over 400 more slots so this also didn’t make sense. After some thought I remembered the ’show slots’ command. After running the command I noticed that I was only being shown 704 slots rather then ther full number of slots I knew that were available.
The diagnostics and administration tool "tapeutil" showed the new and updated element range which confirmed that the configuration from an operating point of view was correct.
So the problem obviously was to do with TSM:
After some research, I discovered that the element count is only queried once upon TSM startup and it is not possible to update the this information without restarting TSM.
Unfortunately this is not the case when you are commissioning additional storage slots (frames or capacity on demand).
The first indication that something was astray was that after the paths and drives online was that the the inability to check in any more tapes as the library was still showing that it was full.
The new frame allowed for over 400 more slots so this also didn’t make sense. After some thought I remembered the ’show slots’ command. After running the command I noticed that I was only being shown 704 slots rather then ther full number of slots I knew that were available.
The diagnostics and administration tool "tapeutil" showed the new and updated element range which confirmed that the configuration from an operating point of view was correct.
So the problem obviously was to do with TSM:
tsm:> show slots 3584atl
PVR slot information for library L32ATL.
Library : L32ATL
Product Id : 03584L32
Support module : 4
Mount
count : 5
Drives : 16
Slots : 704
Changers : 2
Import/Exports :
10
Device : /dev/smc0
Drive 0, element 257
Drive 1, element 258
Drive 2, element 259
Drive 3, element 260
Drive 4, element 261
Drive 5, element 262
Drive 6, element 263
Drive 7, element 264
Drive 8, element 265
Drive 9, element 266
Drive 10, element 267
Drive 11, element 268
Drive 12, element 269
Drive 13, element 270
Drive 14, element 271
Drive 15, element 272
Changer 0, element 1
Changer 1, element 2
ImpExp 0, element number 769
ImpExp 1,
element number 770
ImpExp 2, element number 771
ImpExp 3, element number
772
ImpExp 4, element number 773
ImpExp 5, element number 774
ImpExp
6, element number 775
ImpExp 7, element number 776
ImpExp 8, element
number 777
ImpExp 9, element number 778
slot element range 1025 -
1728
After some research, I discovered that the element count is only queried once upon TSM startup and it is not possible to update the this information without restarting TSM.
tsm:> show slots 3584atl
PVR slot information for library L32ATL.
Library : L32ATL
Product Id : 03584L32
Support module : 4
Mount
count : 8
Drives : 20
Slots : 1130
Changers : 2
Import/Exports :
10
Device : /dev/smc0
Drive 0, element 257
Drive 1, element 258
Drive 2, element 259
Drive 3, element 260
Drive 4, element 261
Drive 5, element 262
Drive 6, element 263
Drive 7, element 264
Drive 8, element 265
Drive 9, element 266
Drive 10, element 267
Drive 11, element 268
Drive 12, element 269
Drive 13, element 270
Drive 14, element 271
Drive 15, element 272
Drive 16, element 273
Drive 17, element 274
Drive 18, element 275
Drive 19, element 276
Changer 0, element 1
Changer 1, element 2
ImpExp 0, element
number 769
ImpExp 1, element number 770
ImpExp 2, element number 771
ImpExp 3, element number 772
ImpExp 4, element number 773
ImpExp 5,
element number 774
ImpExp 6, element number 775
ImpExp 7, element number
776
ImpExp 8, element number 777
ImpExp 9, element number 778
slot element range 1025 - 2154
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Any Advice On ACSLS?
So I have a new job with a new company doing TSM work and they have a STK library using ACSLS. Since I have never used ACSLS and am not sure why it doesn’t have a web interface I am looking for pointers from you all as to tips, tricks, or things I should now when using it. One question I have is why did they make a management tool that has to run on a totally separate piece of hardware? STK has stuck with ACSLS for a long time so I am assuming it must be somewhat worthwhile. Is it?
Thursday, July 7, 2005
FYI: Using Mixed Media In An LTO Library
We recently upgraded one of our 3584's at work with some LTO2 drives. This is the first attempt at a mixed media environment and according to IBM and the following Redbook technote here, you must work out the issues with MOUNTLIMITS or all LTO2 drives could end up in use when you need them since they can also read LTO1 media. So we set our mountlimits accordingly, but it does not help that we have more LTO1 drives than LTO2. So by setting the mount limit to the number of LTO1 drives didn't stop TSM from accessing the LTO2 drives. This they did not explain well and they left one crucial piece out of the puzzle. When using a mixed media library if you do not specificly state which media format to use TSM will use both LTO1 and LTO2 media in a LTO designated storage pool. You want me to explain further? Ok here is how it affected us. We added LTO2 drives and an additional 2 frames to our library and setup the devclasses accordingly, setting the FORMAT to DRIVES so it would use the highest format available by the drive assigned. Well since we didn't partition the library TSM is going to grab whatever drive comes available and will mount the appropriate scratch tape. So if TSM assigns an LTO1 drive then you'll use an LTO1 tape. The only way you can force the LTO2 media to be used is to set the FORMAT setting in the devclass to ULTRIUM2 or ULTRIUM2C (w/Compression). So we didn't think about that and were bit by it when we ran out of LTO1 scratch. We didn't catch it due to our script only looking for scratch in the library not being able to designate between the two media types (which you can really only do if a different vol series is used for labeling). So without the LTO1 scratch we basically lost 2/3 of the drives and didn't know it. So I had to go switch our script to monitor both scratch types and we had to force the LTO's to their appropriate format. Once I realized what was happening it was a "NO BRAINER" that TSM would work that way. The big problem is that TSM did not seperate out the media format for LTO2 so it would be a different devclass type like they did with the 3592's. So be aware how TSM works and make sure you don't make the same mistake I did.
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