Tape Manager for z/VM

The announcement letters for Tape Manager for z/VM V1.2 and V1.3 describe enhancements and new functions available in those releases.

Tape Manager for z/VM helps automate common daily tape operations and helps eliminate tedious, often error-prone, manual tasks.  By managing and monitoring tape resources, Tape Manager increases data availability and improves operator efficiency.  Tape Manager can be used in either a stand-alone z/VM environment, across multiple z/VM environments using a shared catalog, or in conjunction with IBM DFSMSrmm to manage z/VM and z/OS tape resources.

Using a catalog to manage tapes and control access

Tape Manager for z/VM organizes and stores information about tape resources in a tape catalog.  The catalog can serve one z/VM system (a Dedicated Catalog) or can server multiple z/VM systems (a Shared Catalog).  Administrators, operators, and users can use commands to query information in the catalog, add and organize information in the catalog, request tape mounts, find scratch tapes, and manage tape retention periods.

Information in the tape catalog is organized into system and private pools by system administrators, operators, and users, facilitating tape searches and access control.  Support for system and private tape pools includes:

• Adding and deleting tapes to and from pools
• Dynamically creating and deleting tape pools to easily create an identifiable collection of tapes for a specific job or function, such as a daily system backup
• Creating new private pools that can pull scratch tapes from the system pool or another private pool as needed
• Enforcing access privileges based on the attributes of the pool

Access control

Tape Manager offers 2 methods of access control:

• RACF for z/VM (or other External Security Manager)
• Internal access control mechanisms which you can configure

Managing and monitoring tape resources

Tape Manager facilitates improved management of tape resources by:

• Monitoring tape resources and notifying you when tape resources are running low or tape catalog disk space is nearing capacity
• Providing routines for common administrative activities, such as management of scratch tapes, expiration processing, and data security erase

Monitoring tape resources benefits the operations staff and end users as warnings can be addressed before problems occur.  System administrators and operators can take action before users see the error rather than reacting to the error when it occurs.  When tape resources reach a predefined low threshold, a warning is sent to operations, giving them the opportunity to define additional tapes to the available scratch pool in the tape catalog.  Similarly, if the tape catalog disks reach a predetermined high threshold, in terms of percent full, a warning is sent to operations, allowing them to request additional disk space before the 
limit is reached.

Integration with RMM on z/OS

When used in conjunction with IBM DFSMS Removable Media Manager (RMM), Tape Manager supports the management of all z/VM and z/OS tapes in the RMM tape catalog.  Tape pools, access privileges, and retention periods can be defined and updated from z/VM using familiar RMM commands.  The updates to RMM are made by an agent running on z/OS using the RMM API.  In addition, RMM commands can be entered on z/VM.  The agent will issue them on z/OS just as a TSO user would, and return the output to the issuing user on z/VM as messages or a file in the virtual reader.  In this configuration 
when the z/VM command completes, the resulting updates in RMM will only be available when RMM completes the appropriate tasks.  When using Tape Manager with DFSMSrmm on z/OS, RMM is the trusted source of tape resource information.

Sharing tape devices

In addition to managing tape resources, Tape Manager for z/VM also increases efficiency by supporting the sharing of tape devices with other applications and systems.  For customers using the Removable Media Services (RMS) function of DFSMS/VM, Tape Manager will work with RMS to perform automated mounts and share tape devices using Automated Tape 
Libraries (ATLs).  For customers requiring manual mounts, Tape Manager can dynamically find an available tape drive from a predefined device pool, attach it, and release it when done.  This allows customers who aren't using RMS to share tape devices with:

• Other applications that interact directly with tape devices within a z/VM system.
• Other z/VM and non-z/VM systems across LPARs or across a sysplex.  For example, customers using IBM Automated Tape Allocation Manager for z/OS to share tape devices can also share these same devices with the z/VM systems using Tape Manager for z/VM.  Sharing with guest systems that utilize the multiuser attach feature of z/VM is not supported.

With Tape Manager, drives no longer need to be permanently assigned to a specific z/VM system, even for manual mount requests.