4 ms·

Show HN: LTO9 Optimizer

10 points by scaglio 3y ago

orra 3y ago
Interesting. The readme says every new LTO-9 tape needs initialized before it is used for the first time, and that takes anywhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours. I presume this tool can't decrease that time for an individual tape, but it decreases the total time with a huge degree of parallelism. I wonder, what is that degree of parallelism? That is, how many tapes can be initialized at once? I presume it's large but I'm not familiar with 'tape libraries'. Also, to the author: have you thought about putting an explicit license on your script?
- scaglio 3y ago
  Hi, I'm the author. Sincerely, I didn't think to a license yet, but I will. I just wanted to "show" that big vendors don't care about solving very practical issues: some companies still rely on backups on physical tapes, but the current versions of firmware of most libraries don't allow optimizing automatically the tapes. That's quite a problem when maybe a customer just bought 2,000 cartridges. About the parallelism, it's quite simple: a tape needs to be read and optimized by a _tape drive_[0]. Libraries can be configured with a various number of drives, and the script manages all the available ones using the special device of the library and the `mtx` tool on Linux. Also, you're right: it's impossible to decrease the optimization time of a single tape.[1][2][3] Ah, while writing this, I noticed that HPE may have the appropriate tool on their autoloader.[4] [0]: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/3MD86RLJ https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/3MD86RLJ [1]: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4500-tape-library?topic=drives-media-optimization https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4500-tape-library?topic=drives... [2]: https://www.quantum.com/globalassets/products/tape-storage-new/lto-9/lto-9-quantum-faq-092021.pdf https://www.quantum.com/globalassets/products/tape-storage-n... [3]: https://docs.oracle.com/en/storage/tape-storage/storagetek-sl150-modular-tape-library/slofs/library-support-lto9-tape-calibration.html#GUID-FE75CEDD-CC2C-4C04-B6A8-1B2DEFF9D771 https://docs.oracle.com/en/storage/tape-storage/storagetek-s... [4]: https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50005444enw https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50005444enw
  - orra 3y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. It's silly that vendors don't have a tool for this (or maybe one vendor does, but doesn't advertise it well). I don't personally don't use tapes, but it's good of you to share this script.

10 points by scaglio 3y ago

orra 3y ago

Interesting. The readme says every new LTO-9 tape needs initialized before it is used for the first time, and that takes anywhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours. I presume this tool can't decrease that time for an individual tape, but it decreases the total time with a huge degree of parallelism. I wonder, what is that degree of parallelism? That is, how many tapes can be initialized at once? I presume it's large but I'm not familiar with 'tape libraries'. Also, to the author: have you thought about putting an explicit license on your script?

scaglio 3y ago
Hi, I'm the author. Sincerely, I didn't think to a license yet, but I will. I just wanted to "show" that big vendors don't care about solving very practical issues: some companies still rely on backups on physical tapes, but the current versions of firmware of most libraries don't allow optimizing automatically the tapes. That's quite a problem when maybe a customer just bought 2,000 cartridges. About the parallelism, it's quite simple: a tape needs to be read and optimized by a _tape drive_[0]. Libraries can be configured with a various number of drives, and the script manages all the available ones using the special device of the library and the `mtx` tool on Linux. Also, you're right: it's impossible to decrease the optimization time of a single tape.[1][2][3] Ah, while writing this, I noticed that HPE may have the appropriate tool on their autoloader.[4] [0]: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/3MD86RLJ https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/3MD86RLJ [1]: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4500-tape-library?topic=drives-media-optimization https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/ts4500-tape-library?topic=drives... [2]: https://www.quantum.com/globalassets/products/tape-storage-new/lto-9/lto-9-quantum-faq-092021.pdf https://www.quantum.com/globalassets/products/tape-storage-n... [3]: https://docs.oracle.com/en/storage/tape-storage/storagetek-sl150-modular-tape-library/slofs/library-support-lto9-tape-calibration.html#GUID-FE75CEDD-CC2C-4C04-B6A8-1B2DEFF9D771 https://docs.oracle.com/en/storage/tape-storage/storagetek-s... [4]: https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50005444enw https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a50005444enw
- orra 3y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. It's silly that vendors don't have a tool for this (or maybe one vendor does, but doesn't advertise it well). I don't personally don't use tapes, but it's good of you to share this script.