AS/400: How to determine % of tape backup capacity used
AS/400 backup, Backup, IBM TotalStorage 3590 Tape Drive, IBM TotalStorage 3592 Tape Drive, Tape Backups, Tape capacity
Hello, we are using 3592 and 3590 tapes for our AS400 backups and for some performance analysis, i need to know how much % of each tape is being used . Is there any command to determine or any other means to find out % capacity of how much each tape is used.
Software/Hardware used:
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ASKED:
January 28, 2009 10:50 AM
UPDATED:
September 3, 2009 1:36 PM
Answer Wiki:
I think there is no easy way to do it. I would suggest you to generate a tape print with the command
DSPTAP DEV(TAPXX) DATA(*SAVRST) OUTPUT(*PRINT)
and then analyse the results adding the file sizes and do the math. You can also write a CL to do it.
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It certainly is not easy to do and it is even so that any results that you may get are not exact. For once there is the tape capacity that is only an approxiate number. It could be that on one LTO2 tape you can write more bytes than on another.
Second factor is the compression rate at which your data can be compressed. This depends also on the nature of the data.
And than there is the wear and tear of the media. This could reduce the capacity of your cartridges over time.
I made the equasion derived from BRMS volume statistics with some LTO2 tapes (400GB capacity, upto 800Gb with compression) and found that 650 to 700 Gb were written on the volumes.
So you can determine exactly what is written on your tape, but what is the capacity of the Tape ???
Peter
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Thanks all for the answer, through the SST my colleague here advised to see the write % of the tapes, that was quite a help to see how much it writes more recently and how many times as well. Thanks MCL and Peter...great help
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Peter mentioned BRMS. If you are using BRMS, there is an option under the “Media Activity” menu to print the media statistics. That will tell you how many Gb you currently have on every volume – as well as the total amount of data written to and read from each volume and the total number of uses. It’s not going to give you a percentage value.
If you don’t have BRMS – well, you’ll probably have to just do the DSPTAP thing and add it up.
Regards
Mike