The manual tape library extends the scope of system-managed storage to tape devices and their associated volumes outside of the ATLDS environment. It enables the definition of such tape devices as belonging to logical libraries, much as they are defined in an automated tape library. By means of this support, drives and media are associated with a library so that allocation of drives and their appropriate media are properly managed.

Unlike the ATLDS, the manual tape library does not use the library manager. With the manual tape library, a human operator responds to mount messages generated by the host and displayed on a console. There are no robotics associated with an MTL, it is a purely logical grouping of non-ATLDS drives — standalone drives — that is supported with MTL. Mount messages are displayed on consoles for human operators to see and respond to, just as they would for standalone, non-ALTDS tape drives.

Volumes can be associated with manual tape libraries so that only those volumes defined for a specific manual tape library can be mounted on drives in that MTL. See Setting Up a Manual Tape Library for information about defining the manual tape library.

Exception: Manual tape libraries are not intended to operate within competitive robotic tape libraries. If you need to try such a definition, contact the manufacturer of the specific robotic library system for assistance.

Because media associated with any new tape devices will likely be incompatible with the real devices that are being emulated, there is a need to take this management out of the hands of the user and into system management. The manual tape library provides this ability by recognizing the real underlying device type rather than the device type that is being emulated. By defining these libraries, associating the media with these libraries and properly defining the SMS constructs, the allocation of drives and the mounting of the appropriate media can be accomplished through system control.

No JCL changes are required to use MTL. The SMS storage group ACS routines can be updated to influence the placement of new tape data sets to an MTL. However, you must use HCD to identify tape drives as being MTL resident.