Tape Autochanger Usage

Tape Drives: update slot inventory and labeling tapes

Labelling tapes

If you want to use Tape Autochangers, please consider labelling them by barcode. Normally you can add new Volumes into a “Scratch Pool” where other Pools pick them. You can assign them directly to a given Pool if you prefer.

If you have a tape drive that is idle during the label command, it should be chosen automatically. Assuming that your 1st Drive (drive=0) is busy with backups, you can, in this case, use the 2nd drive of your library . If not chosen automatically, you can select the 2nd drive by using “drive=1” on the command line.

Note

The tapes should be labeled as scratch pool tapes. To read more about configuring pools, click here.

Updating Slots Inventory

When changing tape cartridges in your Library by adding or removing Tapes or moving them around you should issue an update slots command within bconsole. Please be aware that some Libraries might unload a used cartridge to an arbitrary free slot, if the selected slot for unloading is currently occupied.

update slots barcode drive=1 storage=Autochanger-LTO

After that Bacula knows where the cartridges are, and the barcode sticker of each individual tape has been read. Now you must do the labelling with an additional command. Please use a non busy drive to label your barcodes.

Sample output

Assuming new tapes are in slots 30,29,28,16,14, you should choose a Pool, Storage and Slot(s) (drive), otherwise you will be prompted interactively.

label barcode storage=Autochanger-LTO pool=Scratch slots=30,29,28,16,14 drive=1

The bconsole status slots command gives you a list of your current slots assignments.

status slots

 Slot |   Volume Name    |   Status  |     Media Type       |      Pool          |
------+------------------+-----------+----------------------+--------------------|
    1*|           VTL001 |    Append |                  LTO |                VTL |
    2 |                  |           |                      |                    |