Use STA to Answer Common Tape Environment Questions

Use STA to help answer common questions about the performance of the library system and the state of drives and media.

Typical Question	Task
Which drives and media have had the most errors in the last 30 days? Are there any correlations between the two?	Identify Drives With the Most Errors
Which drives have had the most errors this week? Have their error rates gone up?	Analyze Drive Failure Trends
Which drives have had significantly declining efficiency over time?	Analyze Drive Efficiency
Is the drive that failed twice today the same one that caused problems two months ago?	Analyze Drive Failure Trends
At 9:00 am today, one of our tape jobs experienced an error. Which drive and media were involved? Have they also experienced other errors?	Identify Media and Drives Involved with Job Errors
What critical errors were reported to STA last month? Is the total number trending up, down, or staying stable?	View Trends in Critical Drive and Media Errors
How many libraries, drives, or media are in my tape system environment? How many drives or media of a particular type are in my tape system environment?	Determine Number of Libraries, Drives, or Media in the System
Which are the top three drives in terms of utilization?	Analyze Drive Utilization
Which types of media are in short supply? Do I have an oversupply of any type?	Identify Shortages or Surpluses of Media Analyze Media Utilization Analyze Drive Utilization
Am I likely to need more media, drives, or storage cells next year? If so, how many?	Identify Shortages or Surpluses of Media
Which types of drives or media are used the most in my tape system?	Analyze Drive Utilization
Which library in my tape environment is the busiest? Which is the least busy?	Report Library Activity Levels
Which media are over 90 percent full? How do I generate a list that can be used to create a script to eject them from the library?	Identify Media that is Approaching Capacity
Have all my drives been upgraded to the latest firmware?	Report Drive Firmware Levels

Best Practices for Investigating Tape Environment Issues

Follow best practices when investigating issues with drives and media.

Tape alert detail

Tape alert counts for the last exchange are available on the Drive, Media, and Exchange Overview screens. To determine the nature of a tape alert, go to the Exchanges Overview Detail View and review the following sections:

Exchange Alerts – Severe
Exchange Alerts – Warning
Exchange Alerts – Informational

Transient media

Media must be in a library storage cell or a drive at the time of a data collection for it to be detected. Media in a transient location is not detected by a data collection and therefore may not appear on the STA screens.

If media is unexpectedly missing, see How STA Handles "Missing" Media for some troubleshooting steps.

Collect drive details

If you suspect a problem with a drive, save details of its recent activity to a PDF file. You can include this file in any inquiries to Oracle Service.

On the Drives Overview screen, select the Drive Serial Number active link to display the Detail View.
Save the resulting display as a PDF file.

Export and review recent exchanges for a drive

Exchange detail may provide valuable information about a drive issue.

On the Drives Overview screen, select View, then Columns.
Select Drive Dismounts (30 days) in the list, or repeatedly press the down arrow and select Manage Columns at the end of the list. You can use this dialog to make the Drive Dismounts (30 days) column visible. When you are finished, click OK.
Select the Drive Dismounts (30 days) aggregate count link for the drive. You are taken to the Exchanges Overview screen, filtered to show all the exchanges included in the count.
On the Exchanges Overview List View, select Columns, then Show All.
Select Export, then Exchange.xls to export the data to Excel format.
A fixable condition may stand out to you as you scroll through the worksheet columns. For example, you may notice that the "Media Directory Invalid" error appears on multiple media.

Create a site-specific STA task cheat sheet

For each area of concern or activity you have accomplished in STA, document the quick steps to do it. For example:

Determining which drives have been cleaned over the last month
Determining which drives have been idle more than a week
Determining if some media need to be retired
How to do year-end planning and new media purchase estimates

Use the procedures in the preceding sections as starting points.