A
Accommodating Non-Standard Label Formats A-1
A
Accommodating Non-Standard Label Formats
By default, the StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library is configured to use the
eight-character label format that is standard for Linear Tape Open (LTO) cartridges.
While most backup and storage management applications support the standard LTO
labeling format, a few use proprietary labeling schemes to track volumes. If you use
such an application, you can, in most cases, configure the SL150 to automatically
translate between the physical labels that are actually on your cartridges and the
logical label format that the application uses internally.
Translating Between Physical and Logical Labels
To accommodate the fullest range of possible labeling schemes, the StorageTek SL150
supports labels 8 to 14 characters long and provides a label windowing feature that lets
you specify how labels should be interpreted when communicating with the host
application.
So, for example, if the host application uses only a portion of the physical cartridge
label to identify volumes, you can tell the library to construct a logical label using a
subset of the characters, starting from the first column in the label and reading to the
right. Alternatively, if the physical cartridge label is simply a string of characters that
does not identify the media domain (LTO) and type (Gen-3, Gen-4, Gen-5, Gen-6), you
can tell the library to skip domain and type checking and send all characters to the
host without any further processing (you should not use this option, if your labels do
include a domain and type).
The StorageTek SL150user interface supports the following labeling options:
No type checking
passes all characters in the label without modification and without checking the media
domain and type. Use this option if your labels do not identify the media:
M123456789AB
does not, for example, contain a media descriptor, such as
L5
.
Prepend last two characters
passes all the characters after moving the last two characters in the label to the front:
KL10203012L5
is translated to
L5KL10203012
.
Full label
passes the first eight characters in the physical label:
KL10203012L5
is translated to
KL102030
.
Trim last character
passes the first seven characters in the physical label:
KL10203012L5
is translated to
KL10203
.
To Next Page
Loading...
Need help?
General