-----Richard Rhodes wrote: ----- >Sometimes I want to have TSM test out a tape drive. >Something like . . . > - pick a drive > - pick a tape > - have tsm mount the tape and read the label (or something) > - tell me this succeeded or not > >Like yesterday . . . IBM repaired a tape drive. After fixing it, >IBM >tells us it's fixed. We put the drive online . . .and wait for TSM >to use it. For this particular drive, it was several hours before >TSM used it. > >We also get this after an upgrade, or adding a new drive. To get >TSm to used any drive, let alone a particular drive, requires >starting a migration, update stgpool, backup to tape, etc. All >are large processes. > >Is there a simple way to get TSM to exercise a particular tape drive? >Or,what do you do in these situations? > >We have 3590 drives in 3494 libraries, and 3592 drives in 3584 >libraries.
You could leave the drive offline to TSM and use command line utilities to mount, read, and dismount a tape. We have 3590 and 3592 drives in a 3494 library. We would use mtlib to mount and dismount tapes, and IBMtapeutil to read from tapes. I don't know whether mtlib supports 3484 libraries. If not, I suspect that IBM supplies an analogous utility program for such libraries.
