IBM Magstar 3494 manual Things You Should Never Do, Things You Should Try to Avoid Doing

Things You Should Never Do

This section gives a list of actions that you should never perform when operating a 3494. Failure to follow these recommendations will result in serious problems, including severe performance degradation.

v Never remove cartridges from tape drives unless told to do so by the Library Manager. Moving a cartridge can result in it being marked misplaced or inaccessible. The Library Manager will automatically clear the drive while in Automatic mode. Here are some cases where the Library Manager will indicate that the operator should clear the drive:

± An operator intervention indicates that a tape drive failure has occurred and

the cartridge should be removed from the speci®ed drive.

± A re-inventory of the complete system has been requested. At this time all

cartridges should be removed from the drives and placed in empty cells. The

re-inventory scans all cells and recreates the inventory database.

± If the library is being used in Manual Mode and a mount is requested for a

drive that has a cartridge in its feed slot, the cartridge should be removed

from the drive so the mount can be performed. On returning to Automatic

mode, cartridges which are already loaded in the drives or in the feed slot

should be left in place.

v Never insert more cartridges into empty cells in the library than there are free

cells indicated on the Operational Status panel. This is because cartridges

currently loaded on drives must have a cell available when they are unloaded

from the drive.

v Never insert cartridges into empty cells or move cartridges around in the library

unless the Inventory Update function is enabled. Unless these cells are scanned

on returning to Automatic Mode, the Library Manager will not be able to tell which

cartridges have been added or moved.

v Never fail to save the logical volumes associated with a VTS during a

Re-inventory Complete System unless they truly need to be deleted.

v Never leave Manual Mode until mounts that were started (cartridges that were

physically placed in the feed slot of a drive) have been cleared from the Manual

Mode panel.

v Never place Exported Stacked Volumes in the High-Capacity Input/Output Facility

or into free cells in the library. This would cause them to be inserted as scratch

volumes, and the data on them would be permanently lost.

v Never load a drive without being told to do so by the Library Manager (which

only occurs in Manual Mode). If you need to load a cartridge without entering it

into the library database, use the Mount From Input Station function.

Things You Should Try to Avoid Doing

This section gives a list of actions you should avoid when operating a 3494, but whose consequences are less serious than those in the list above. Failure to follow these recommendations may still cause signi®cant performance degradation.

vAvoid leaving the Convenience Input¤Output Station door open. After several minutes this will result in an operator intervention being sent to the host indicating the Convenience Input¤Output Station door is open.

vAvoid running with the library completely full. Running with a full library makes it impossible to insert any more cartridges into the library and results in cartridges being left in the I/O stations (Convenience and High-Capacity). It may also hinder

60Magstar 3494 Tape Library Operator Guide