46 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown
46 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown
# LTO9 Optimizer
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This is a simple Bash script to initialize/optimize LTO9 physical tapes.
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## The Problem
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Enterprise LTO9 tapes are cool, but if you buy them in stocks of 1,000, or even 2,000, you potentially need [weeks](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4500-tape-library?topic=drives-media-optimization) before using them.
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A single tape is held from 20 minutes up to 2 hours in the drive, and you cannot do anything but wait.
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This is the standard behavior from this LTO generation.
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I find unnerving that enterprise tape libraries are sold without a feature to do this automatically, so I wrote this simple Bash script.
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## The Solution
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Connect the Tape Library to a Linux server using SAS or FiberChannel (I only have tested FC), then run `lsscsi -g | grep medium` to get the special device of the changer, which will be something like `/dev/sgX`.
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Then you can run the command:
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`optimizer.sh </dev/sgX> <parallelism>`
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Where 'parallelism' is a number, which can be equal to the number of the drives of the library/partition.
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The script takes **long** pauses to avoid too many load/unload commands, so... be patient.
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It has been tested with both:
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- IBM TS4500 Tape Library
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- Quantum i6000 Tape Library
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## Dependencies
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The only package required is [mtx](https://linux.die.net/man/1/mtx).
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## Fun Facts
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As far as I know, up to today, 4th of July, 2023, none of the major brands of Tape Libraries can provide a tool capable of this.
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I wrote the script in a day, then tested and fixed it.
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Total time spent: 3 days.
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Total money earned: none, so I'll just put it here.
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## Disclaimer
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Please note that this script **does not mean to replace** any of the eventual official tools that may exist – but sadly I wasn't aware of.
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P.S. I am aware the script is poorly written, but I don't have a test environment anymore to test it properly. I'll do it in my spare time. |