HP OpenVMS Systems

Some earlier AlphaServer environments supported direct-attach of enterprise and modular tape libraries through a SCSI connection. However, newer libraries are not supported in this fashion (see the OpenVMS Operating System Software Product Description for specifics). Integrity servers do NOT support direct attachment of ANY tape library.

For direct-attach tape connectivity outside of a shared SAN environment, OpenVMS supports individual tape drives, as well as certain Autoloader tape configurations, on AlphaServer and Integrity server systems. (See the OpenVMS Operating System Software Product Description for specifics.)

The following matrices describe the supported tape libraries and tape drives for the Archive Backup System (ABS) and Storage Library System (SLS) products. Included are restrictions and the status of qualifications that may be in progress. This matrix is updated frequently as new support is declared. Each of the two matrices below has the minimum version of ABS or SLS (as the table may be) that may be used with the corresponding tape library and tape drive combination.

Table key

• NA—Not applicable
• NS—Not supported
• R1—The SMS products will support these devices only when the devices are set to have a barcode label length of 6 characters. With this series of devices, the barcode label on the tapes will be 7-8 characters in length, qualifying as a restriction. In order to support this device without any changes to our products(MRU/ABS/MDMS), we need to ensure that the barcode label on these devices is 6 characters in length. This is because OpenVMS supports only 6 character tape volume labels, and this restriction carries up to the layered products.
• R2—The MDMS LOAD VOLUME command uses the same drive which is used while initialization of volume irrespective of its state and media type. The details are given below:
  • If the drive is full with a particular volume and a load command is performed on this volume without using /DRIVE=<drivename>, the command will run successfully by loading the volume in the same drive. The command fails if the /DRIVE qualifier has a drivename other than the drive where the volume is present. The command completes without error if the drivename is the same drive where the volume is currently present.
  • If the drive is already full, the volume will be unloaded and the given volume will be loaded. This happens even if other empty drives are available with the same media type.
  • If the media type of the drive is changed after initializing a volume, the volume uses the same drive irrespective of its media type. If a drive is deleted, the load command for volumes which used this drive for initialization fail with a " %MDMS-E-NOSUCHDRIVE, specified drive does not exist" error even if other drives with same media type are available.
• R3—If there are two jukeboxes J1 and J2, and two magazines M1 and M2 which are placed in J1 and J2 respectively, and if one of the jukeboxes (for example, J2) is deleted, and an MDMS INVENTORY command is issued, the placement of the magazine M2 does not get cleared. The placement field of M2 still shows jukebox J2, although J2 does not exist in the MDMS database. If an MDMS MOVE command is subsequently used to move the magazine into another jukebox, the command fails with %MDMS-E-INVSRCDEST.
• R4—Moving volumes from one magazine to another magazine fails with an "MDMS-E-INVSLOT" error when the first slot of the target magazine is not empty.
• R5—For VLS Libraries:
  • The volumes should be created in uppercase.
  • No volumes can be moved to the OFFSITE location because there is no involvement of physical tape.

Table notes