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Partner TechTip: Track All Your IBM i Tapes Centrally

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Do you struggle to find a reliable, centralized tape-management solution?

 

Does your IBM i tape-tracking solution handle all your centralized tape-management needs? Are you satisfied with the reporting capabilities and the reliability of your solution? Can you provide a single report for your off-site storage vendor that documents all volumes that are leaving from and arriving at the data center for the current business day? Does your current solution support your automated backup solution too?

 

Managing volumes across multiple servers running IBM i can present a challenge for any operations team. You can have issues with logging and tracking volumes and with making sure the correct volume is mounted. The always-present fear is that an operator will write over a volume that contains active files. Then, there's also the problem of consolidating report information from multiple logs to give to your off-site storage site.

 

Robot/SAVE has been helping customers for years by providing a centralized scratch pool, reporting, and tape integrity solution for users with multiple partitions in an IBM i environment. Without a good solution, it's probably only a matter of time before your current method causes you to miss a backup, write over a tape, or misplace a critical backup. Robot/SAVE provides tape integrity across your entire network. Your team cannot mount a volume from one partition on another partition; Robot/SAVE simply won't let it happen!

 

Robot/SAVE's volume Error Resolution panel and reports provide your team with the information they need to better manage volumes across your systems and partitions (see Figure 1).

 

012309Huntingtontnt43 fig1errorres.jpg

Figure 1: The Error Resolution panel lists any volumes with active data that someone attempted to overwrite. (Click images to enlarge.)

 

Robot/SAVE also provides a Good Morning Report (see Figure 2) that lists tapes leaving from and arriving at the data center, tape forecasting for the entire data center, and volumes that are expiring soon. And, if you prefer, you can easily see this information for the entire data center directly from Robot/SAVE's menu system.

 

012309Huntingtontnt43 fig2goodmornrpt.jpg

Figure 2: The Good Morning report summarizes volume activity across all servers.

 

Robot/SAVE Eliminates Headaches

If you're tired of inadequate solutions that claim they provide network support but don't, it's time to give your operations team a tool they can rely on! Call for your Robot/SAVE 30-day free trial. You won't be disappointed. Learn more about Robot/SAVE by clicking here. And check out Help/Systems' other offerings in the MC Showcase Buyer's Guide.

TOM HUNTINGTON

Tom Huntington is Executive Vice President of Technical Solutions at HelpSystems, and has been with the company for nearly 30 years. He works with business alliances, acquisitions and large customer relationships and ensures that the HelpSystems software works with other major software and hardware vendors worldwide.

Tom often speaks on enterprise scheduling, security, automation topics, IBM i technology, and the HelpSystems products, and hosts technical presentations on a variety of automation topics. He is the author of the HelpSystems IBM i Marketplace Survey and has written articles on automated operations, security, cloud computing, and business intelligence for leading trade journals and newsletters. He was named an IBM Champion in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 for over three decades of advocation and thought leadership on the IBM i platform.

Contact Tom at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


 

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