Dupping from physical to virtual tape via BRMS

All,

System i520, i7.1, internal 5755 LTO2 tape drive, 2 3581 LTO2 tape
libraries, and a virtual tape library defined.

The goal is to drop the 2 tape libraries, keeping the tape drive and
virtual tape to make duplicate copies. I plan on saving direct to physical
media, then dupping to virtual, then dupping from the virtual to another
physical media. (I prefer this method over save to virtual followed by
virtual-to-physical dupping because it gets the data onto physical media in
less time.)

A couple of months ago I did some testing with one of the tape /libraries/
of physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-physical simply for timing purposes.

Today I tried doing it from the tape /drive/ to virtual, also for timing
purposes. I got this message:

Message ID . . . . . . : BRM148A

Date sent . . . . . . : 11/29/13 Time sent . . . . . . :
11:21:45


Message . . . . : No media of class VRT256K is available at location

VIRTUAL. (C G)



Cause . . . . . : No media of class VRT256K exists or is available for
the
operation to use at location VIRTUAL.

Recovery . . . : Do one of the following:

-- Add more media of this class to the media inventory, mount this
media
on device TAPVRT01, and type G to continue.

-- For virtual tapes, add volumes to any image catalog except TAPVRT01
and
also add them to the BRMS inventory. Then type G to continue.

-- Type C to cancel the operation.

Possible choices for replying to message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :

G -- Continue with the operation.
C -- Cancel processing.

Thinking the issue was the tape /device/ I then tried it from the tape
/library/ again. Same error. This worked a couple of months ago! When I
do a DSPTAP on the virtual tape VRT001, it shows the first 6 labels have
been dupped and then it's as if the tape is full and it wants another tape.
Also, when I expired the virtual media, I got a warning that the media was
part of a "set" and only the first volume was expired. I had to expire the
"set." I did not have to do anything in my testing a couple of months ago
with "sets."

Evidently I have changed something that I don't remember. My idea was to
have a single virtual tape media, VRT001, and treat it as a scratch tape
because, well, that's what it would be. It's just a placeholder in order
to get the data from one physical media onto another physical media.

I am by no means a BRMS expert. BRMS is wonderful, but it's complexity at
times is way more than my simple shop needs. Any insight is greatly
appreciated.