Re: TS2900 Media Library.

Jorge,

Welcome to library land! The reason you didn't find anything specific on using that library is that it essentially is 'the same' (from the IBM i view) as nearly every library that's been supported for the last 15 years! You probably want to read the 'Backup and Recovery Guide' as a great referent for exactly that.

The key thing, if you need to know one specific thing, with a library is that you MUST now use volume IDs. Almost as important is that you'll reference the library device rather than the tape drive. When you initialize the tapes you must use the value on the bar-code label on the tape. Now when you use DSPTAP or SAVLIB or SAV or RST or RSTLIB or any other save or restore command you'll specify not just the library device but the tape volume ID. The library then automatically places that tape in the actual drive before performing the action.

So YOU must decide which volume ID to use. The best way to do that is to utilize BRMS but you can write a few programs to track your volumes and which one should be used for each save.

Note that for things like SAVE 21, 22, 23 you cannot use the library device. In that case use DSPTAP to get the proper volume loaded, then vary off the library and vary on the tape drive. Do the save to the tape drive, then reverse the process. Of course you can also write your own SAVE 21 that reference volume IDs with the library device.

Hope that helps!!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

On 6/24/2011 12:03 AM, Jorge Merino wrote:

Hi folks!

We got a V7R1 IBMi and it came with a TS2900 Tape autoloader device which seems pretty cool, but this is the first time that I have to deal with a Media Library device and I do not know how to start using it, I already googled but I couldn't find good a good tutorial, and the lack of IBM's info on how to use the device for the IBMi disappointed me this time.

I already connected the device to the IBMi, loaded the tapes, configured the library as Random, configured the IP to access it through the web interface.

We also had to get a new cable to interface it to the IBMi server, so far, so good. I can see the TAPMLB03 device there and a TAP02 device as well.

I found that I have to get familiar with commands like WRKTAPCTG, ADDTAPCTG, SETTAPCGY, RMVTAPCTG... does anyone has experience with this media library devices and can tell me how to use it? The plan is to use it for our daily backups, I loaded 9 tapes.

Any lead will be appreciated, thank you.

Jorge Merino
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