HP Archive Backup System for OpenVMS Guide to Operations

Media Management
4.5 Jukeboxes
4.5.16 Topology
4.5.17 Usage
4.5.18 Inventory Jukebox
The topology attribute specifies the physical configuration of a certain type of jukebox when it is
being used with magazines. Topology is only useful when all of the following conditions are
true:
• The jukebox is controlled by MRD
• The jukebox is in the TL820 class that allows you to open the jukebox door and insert entire
magazines
• The jukebox is configured with towers, faces and levels
You specify the topology of the jukebox so that you can move magazines into and out of the
jukebox by specifying a position rather than a start slot.
For each tower in the jukebox, you specify the number of faces in the tower, the number of levels
in each face, and the number of slots in each level. For TL820-class jukeboxes, the typical values
for each tower are 8 faces, 2 or 3 levels per face and 11 slots per level. The associated magazine
contains 11 slots and fits into a position specified by tower, face and level. Other jukeboxes may
vary.
The usage attribute determines whether this jukebox is set up to use magazines, and has two values:
• Magazine - The jukebox is configured to use magazines
• Nomagazine - The jukebox is not configured to use magazines
You should only set usage to magazine if you plan to use MDMS magazine objects and move all
the volumes in the magazines together. An alternative is to move individual volumes separately,
even if they reside in a physical magazine; in this case set usage to nomagazine.
MDMS provides the capability to inventory jukeboxes, and “discover” volumes in them and
optionally create volumes in the MDMS database to match what was discovered. With this feature,
you can simply place new volumes in the jukebox and let MDMS create the associated volume
records with attributes that you can specify.
There are two types of inventory:
• Inventory using a vision system, which polls the jukebox’s firmware to locate volumes; this
option is available for most larger library and silo type jukeboxes, and this operation takes
only a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the size of the jukebox.
• Physical inventory, which actually loads volumes into drives to read volume labels. This is
the only kind of inventory available for small loader-type jukeboxes that lack a vision system.
This option is also available for larger jukeboxes, but is not recommended as it takes a
considerable amount of time.
You can inventory whole jukeboxes, or specify a volume range or slot range, as follows:
• Volume range is supported for DCSC-controlled jukeboxes and MRD-based jukeboxes that
have a vision system. Specify a range of volumes such as ABC001-ABC024. Up to 1000
volumes can be specified in a single range. When specifying a volume range, only those
volumes are inventoried; other volumes in the jukebox are not.
• Slot range is available only for MRD-controlled jukeboxes, and can be applied to either
vision or non-vision varieties. With slot range, only the specified slots are inventoried; other
slots are not.
4-12 Media Management