With ADSM, you maintain your volume inventory by performing the following tasks:
ADSM expects to be able to access all volumes it knows about. For example, ADSM tries to fill up tape volumes. If a volume containing client data is only partially full, ADSM will later request that volume be mounted to store additional data. If the volume cannot be mounted, an error occurs.
To make volumes that are not full unavailable to ADSM, you can change the access mode of the volumes. For example, use the UPDATE VOLUME command with ACCESS=UNAVAILABLE. The server will not attempt to mount a volume that has an access mode of unavailable.
If you want to make volumes unavailable to send the data they contain offsite for safekeeping, a more controlled way to do this is to use a copy storage pool. You can back up your primary storage pools to a copy storage pool and then send the copy storage pool volumes offsite. You can track these copy storage pool volumes by changing their access mode to offsite, and updating the volume history to identify their location. For more information, see "Backing Up Storage Pools".
To reuse tapes in ADSM storage pools, you must do two things:
Expiration processing deletes from the ADSM database information about any client files that are no longer valid according to the policies you have set. For example, suppose four backup versions of a file exist in ADSM server storage, and only three versions are allowed in the backup policy (the management class) for the file. Expiration processing deletes information about the oldest of the four versions of the file. The space that the file occupied in the storage pool can then be reclaimed.
You can run expiration processing automatically or by command. See "Running Expiration Processing to Delete Expired Files".
You can have ADSM reclaim volumes that pass a reclamation threshold, a percentage of unused space on the volume. The reclamation threshold is set for each storage pool. See "Reclaiming Space in Sequential Access Storage Pools".
For a storage pool associated with a library that has more than one drive, the reclaimed data is moved to other volumes in the same storage pool. For a storage pool associated with a library that has only one drive, the reclaimed data is moved to volumes in another storage pool that you must define, called a reclamation storage pool. See "Reclaiming Volumes in a Storage Pool with One Drive".
When you back up the database or export server information, ADSM records information about the volumes used for these operations in the volume history file. ADSM will not allow you to reuse these volumes until you delete the volume information from the volume history file. To reuse volumes that have previously been used for database backup or export, use the DELETE VOLHISTORY command. For information about the volume history file, see "Saving the Volume History File".
| Note: | If your server is licensed for the DRM feature, the volume information is automatically deleted during MOVE DRMEDIA command processing. For additional information about DRM, see Chapter 21. "Using Disaster Recovery Manager". |
When you define a storage pool, you must specify the maximum number of scratch volumes that the storage pool can use. ADSM automatically requests a scratch volume when needed. When the number of scratch volumes that ADSM is using for the storage pool exceeds the maximum number of scratch volumes specified, the storage pool can run out of space.
Ensure that you set the maximum number of scratch volumes high enough for the expected usage. When you exceed this number, you can do one or both of the following:
For automated libraries, see also "Maintaining a Supply of Scratch Volumes in an Automated Library".