Inventory times

Various types of inventories are supported by the tape library. The amount of time required to create the inventory for the library or a frame in the library varies with each type of inventory.

The tape library tracks the logical location of all of its elements by performing an automatic inventory as required. The automatic inventory improves application performance. You can also manually initiate an inventory, if necessary, from the System page of the tape library.

Table 1 shows the typical time required for the tape library to inventory cartridges.
Table 1. Typical time required to calculate the inventory of cartridges
Frame component Typical time to inventory (in seconds)
All storage slots 32
All tape drives 12
Service Magazine 4
An inventory operation includes a check to determine whether each cartridge storage slot in the library is empty or full, and a scan of the bar code labels. An inventory occurs whenever you:
  • Power on the tape library
  • Issue the SCSI Initialize Element Status with Range command
  • Close the front door after manually accessing the inventory.
  • Initiate an inventory from the GUI or REST API.

Inventory all tiers

A standard inventory is a scan of Tier 1; however, at times it is necessary to inventory all tiers. This operation takes more time because it requires moving the cartridges to scan each bar code. For all inventory operations, tiers 2 and higher are only scanned when one of the following changes occurs:
  • A Tier 1 cartridge bar code label has changed
  • Enough Tier 1 bar code labels have changed in a column to warrant an inventory of the entire column
  • Scan all tiers is selected when initiating a manual inventory from the GUI or REST API

Table 2 shows the typical time required for the tape library to inventory all tiers.

Table 2. Typical time required to inventory all tiers
Frame component Typical time to inventory all tiers (in seconds)
One full storage slot 75
All storage slots bulk loaded (row 1 empty) 7740 (5 seconds per cartridge)