Hi team,

I have TS4300 3555-L3A tape library. I'm using it for backing up IBM i. In green screen, my CL program takes selected cartridge to mount and save daily backup on it. The problem is that the selected cartridge should be "Inserted" status to mount but whenever I place a cartridge in I/O magazine (left one), its status shown as "Available". I can't change its status to "Inserted".

Thank you in advance.

Hi again,

It was a misunderstanding. When you insert a cartridge to the tape library for the FIRST TIME, its status will be Inserted. You can only use it if it's Available. So, there was no issue.

Hi team,

I have TS4300 3555-L3A tape library. I'm using it for backing up IBM i. In green screen, my CL program takes selected cartridge to mount and save daily backup on it. The problem is that the selected cartridge should be "Inserted" status to mount but whenever I place a cartridge in I/O magazine (left one), its status shown as "Available". I can't change its status to "Inserted".

Thank you in advance.

Hi Abdulkadir,

May I ask how are you manage to mount a cartridge in a drive afterwards?
Do you use BRMS? Do your cartridges have barcodes?
I don't have BRMS and my backups are performed directly to the TAPxx device.
I wish to schedule a CL that temporarily varies on the library instead, then CHKTAPs the CTG-ID of a specific slot per specific day of the week, just so it'll mount.
I'm getting timed out after 5 mins, when via the TS4300 GUI it takes a few second.

Best regards,

Ronen Carmel

Hi again,

It was a misunderstanding. When you insert a cartridge to the tape library for the FIRST TIME, its status will be Inserted. You can only use it if it's Available. So, there was no issue.

Hi team,

I have TS4300 3555-L3A tape library. I'm using it for backing up IBM i. In green screen, my CL program takes selected cartridge to mount and save daily backup on it. The problem is that the selected cartridge should be "Inserted" status to mount but whenever I place a cartridge in I/O magazine (left one), its status shown as "Available". I can't change its status to "Inserted".

Thank you in advance.

@Ronen Carmel, I am not familiar with the specifics of the TS4300 GUI, but I assume that when a request is made to mount a cartridge, it moves the cartridge to the drive and returns as soon as the cartridge is inserted to the drive. It does not wait for the cartridge to become ready. This is the behavior I suspect. When a cartridge is mounted to a drive via a CL (I don't know what that term signifies as my level is at the SCSI command layer) does that mean that there is a cartridge "inserted" into the drive, or does it mean that a cartridge is mounted and comes ready before the command completes?

If the process via the CL expects the drive to come ready (for example, a LOAD/UNLOAD SCSI command to return GOOD status), then this is a different operation than telling the GUI to mount a cartridge. If the cartridge is an L9 cartridge AND the cartridge has never been mounted in a drive previously, then the drive performs Medium Optimization (that is, a calibration of the specific cartridge) before a LOAD command will return GOOD status. This Medium Optimization usually takes about 20 minutes. This could be the issue with the timeout, but it is only if this is the first use of an LTO-9 cartridge (see https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4300-tape-library?topic=STAKKZ/ts4300_kc/cart_initialization.htm). After the cartridge has been optimized, then a mount should take, on average, 17 sec (see https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/dtl/2.9.5?topic=performance-lto-specifications). Also, some Error Recovery Procedures (ERP) in the tape drive cause a channel calibration (NOT Medium Calibration) which might add close to 4 minutes.

Whatever is causing the delay is difficult to guess at since there is no data to analyze.

Hi Abdulkadir,

May I ask how are you manage to mount a cartridge in a drive afterwards?
Do you use BRMS? Do your cartridges have barcodes?
I don't have BRMS and my backups are performed directly to the TAPxx device.
I wish to schedule a CL that temporarily varies on the library instead, then CHKTAPs the CTG-ID of a specific slot per specific day of the week, just so it'll mount.
I'm getting timed out after 5 mins, when via the TS4300 GUI it takes a few second.

Best regards,

Ronen Carmel

Hi again,

It was a misunderstanding. When you insert a cartridge to the tape library for the FIRST TIME, its status will be Inserted. You can only use it if it's Available. So, there was no issue.

Hi team,

I have TS4300 3555-L3A tape library. I'm using it for backing up IBM i. In green screen, my CL program takes selected cartridge to mount and save daily backup on it. The problem is that the selected cartridge should be "Inserted" status to mount but whenever I place a cartridge in I/O magazine (left one), its status shown as "Available". I can't change its status to "Inserted".

Thank you in advance.