Status of Tape Library During Automatic Cleaning

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For an overview of the methods that are supported for cleaning a drive in the tape library, see the TS4500 IBM Documentation. .

The design of automatic cleaning is intended to make the cleaning process as transparent as possible to any host application that is using the library. The library performs the following steps during an automatic cleaning process:
  1. Detect the need and opportunity to clean a drive.
  2. Move the cleaning cartridge from the storage cell to the drive.
  3. Wait for the cleaning to complete (approximately 90 seconds for Ultrium Tape Drives and about 3 minutes for 3592 Tape Drives).

    While you wait for the cleaning to complete, the tape library (medium changer) accepts and processes all SCSI commands except for a move to a drive that is being cleaned. Any command to move a data cartridge to a drive that is being cleaned is queued.

    While an automatic cleaning is in progress, movement of the cleaning cartridge is not reflected in the element descriptors reported in response to a Read Element Status command. The Storage Element descriptor reported for the cleaning cartridge slot does not change while the cleaning cartridge is in a drive (indicates the FULL bit set to 1). Similarly, the Data Transfer Element descriptor reported for the drive that is cleaning does not change (indicates the FULL bit set to 0).

  4. Move the cleaning cartridge from the drive to the storage cell.
  5. Increment the cleaning cartridge usage counter.

    This counter is used by the library to determine when the cleaning cartridge must be replaced. When the usage counter exceeds the recommended threshold, the library displays a warning message on the operator panel that indicates the need to replace the cleaning cartridge.