- How to Use This Catalog
- Form and Content of Process Catalog Entries
- Application Optimization
- Asset Management
- Budget Management
- Business Continuity
- Business Relationship Management
- Capacity Planning
- Change Management
- Configuration Management
- Contract Management
- Contractor Management
- Cost Recovery
- Data Storage Management
- Facilities Management
- Inventory Management
- Job Scheduling
- Negotiation Management
- Network Management
- Output Management
- Performance Management
- Problem Management
- Production Acceptance
- Production Control
- Physical Database Management
- Quality Assurance
- Security Management
- Service-Level Management
- Service Request Management
- Software Distribution
- System Monitoring
- Tape Management
- Workload Monitoring
Tape Management
This process manages and optimizes methods to allocate, store, administer, and optimize tape usage. It seeks to make sure that enough (but not too much) operational tape is available; that various tape media, including virtual tape, are used as effectively as possible; and that manual tape mounts are kept to a minimum.
Tasks |
Skills |
Retrieve, mount, and replace tapes in tape library Manage automated tape loaders, virtual tape, silos, and all major vendor technologies in the tape family Manage tape systems with automation tools Improve performance by tuning tape parameters, including block size, compression, and caching |
Knowledge of utilities associated with copy, repair, and various production support processes Basic understanding of tape library functions (retention, inventory, and so forth) Understanding of storage performance trade-offs (disk versus tape, near-line versus offline) Experience with storage area networking management |
Staffing |
Automation Technology |
None |
Tape transport subsystems Silos and virtual tape servers Tape-management software |
Best Practices |
Metrics |
Use of a common organization and management process for tape storage systems across all platforms Maintenance of a detailed inventory and catalog mechanism for all tape files Use of automated software to manage business continuity tapes Use of automatic placement of data to manage performance based on data criticality, access frequency, and so forth Ongoing performance management/optimization process that monitors tapes coming up for expiration, length of service for each tape, and optimal file placement on tapes Ongoing investigation of how costs can be reduced both internally and externally |
Utilization per cartridge Number of (manual) mounts Cost/GB (or cartridge) Staffing per unit capacity (staffing/n-tapes/mounts/etc.) Mean-time-between-failures (MTBF): How many applications were affected, and for how long, due to tape-related issues? |
Process Integration |
Futures |
Disk storage management |
Tape to become an element of a Storage Area Network Virtual tape (data set indexing) Transport independence Inter-platform use of automated tape Media commoditization Intelligent storage controllers Higher integration of tape and disk subsystems Dynamic (and intelligent) data placement independent of media |