Virtual TapeServer 8.3 Configuration Guide

125
14
Enabling and Configuring Scan/Cleanup
Scan/Cleanup is a Virtual TapeServer (VTS) feature that is designed to help you maintain VTS. It
scans pools and virtual tapes to identify virtual tapes that are past their retention period.
Scan/Cleanup can erase old virtual tapes to recover disk space. You can also schedule virtual tape
erasures when the overall disk space falls below a specified threshold. Scan/Cleanup can be used to
erase tapes after they are exported to physical tape using stacked export jobs. See "Enabling and
Performing Stacked Exports" on page 45 for more information about migration. Refer to "Exporting
virtual tapes" on page 107 for more information about manually erasing virtual tapes using
Scan/Cleanup.
Here is a description of the general Scan/Cleanup functionality and the erase process:
l A virtual tape that is locked cannot be erased. Virtual tapes can be individually locked, locked
by pool, or locked by autoloading. The locked status must be manually changed to erase a
locked virtual tape.
l For the erase process, the following rules are applied to identify the virtual tapes to be
erased.
l Do not schedule erasure of virtual tapes that have not been migrated by VTS.
l Do not schedule erasure of a virtual tape that is smaller than a minimum file size.
l Schedule erasure of a virtual tape if its retention time has expired. (The retention
period is set when the pool is created or modified.)
l Schedule erasure of virtual tapes that exceed a specified percent of usage.
Each time Scan/Cleanup runs, it scans all virtual tapes and applies these business rules. If a
virtual tape meets the criteria, it is identified for erasure. Once a virtual tape is erased, it
cannot be recovered.
l The erase process can be manual or automated. To enable Scan/Cleanup, set the cleanup_
enable parameter in the VTS configuration file. To configure automated Scan/Cleanup, set
cleanup_autoerase. Then, configure cleanup_scan_at and cleanup_interval. The cleanup_
enable parameter enables the feature, the cleanup_autoerase parameter enables automated
erasure, and the cleanup_scan_at and cleanup_interval parameters determine how often and
how frequently the process will be run. By default, automated erasure is disabled.