> >What I would like to ask the group is what are some >strategies for batch processing without virtual tape? >
Eliminate the tape usage. We looked at virtual tape a few years ago and decided it was not a good fit for us. We were not huge users of tape, and we didn't want to maintain and pay for another system in perpetuity, so we went the other direction - eliminate tape usage where possible. We spent the money on man-hours instead of hardware. 1) We worked with job owners to change their jobs so data was written to disk files instead of tape files were appropriate. This had the added benefits of getting the data into SMS management and eliminated a BCP hole that existed - data that only had one copy on a tape stored onsite. 2)Tape backups were replaced with CA-Disk (hsm) application backups. Had the added benefit of duplicate copies since we keep CA-Disk backups both onsite and offsite. The automatic consolidation (stacking) that CA-Disk manages also saved us some money with Iron Mountain by greatly reducing the number of tapes we shipped and storage there. We not only managed to keep another piece of hardware out of the shop, but eliminated one of our two STK powderhorn silos by doing this. We are working on getting to the point where we run only system level applications with tape - DB2/IMS images, CA-Disk backups and archives, BCP backups. Jeffrey Deaver, Senior Analyst, Systems Engineering 651-665-4231 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
