Figure 1 shows an environment that supports separated ranges of tape-volume serial numbers (for example, the range of tapes managed by DFSMShsm is separate from ranges of tapes used by other departments for other purposes).

Figure 1. Recommended Environment For Managing Separate Ranges of Tapes. In this environment, operations requests a list of empty tapes. The initial mount request for migration, backup, or their recycle is for a specific tape. After the initial tape is mounted, operations either preloads the empty tapes into cartridge loaders or responds to mount requests.

Table 1 is a summary of considerations for a DFSMShsm-managed tape specific scratch pool environment for media optimization.