Physical addresses

The TS4500 tape library assigns each tape drive a unique address to indicate its physical location.

The physical address of each drive is displayed in the Location column of the Drives table in the management GUI. This column is displayed by default.

The physical address consists of three values:

Frame number: Represented as Fx, where F equals the frame and x equals its number. The leftmost frame in the library is always F1, regardless of whether it is a base frame or not. The frame numbers increment by one for each frame to the right of frame 1.
Column number: Represented as Cy, where C equals the column and y equals its number. Columns 1 - 4 are available for drives.
Exceptions: If the frame is in position 1 (the leftmost frame of a single accessor library), only columns 2 - 4 are available for drives.
If the frame is in position 1 of a dual accessor library, only column 4 is available for drives. In addition, only columns 1, and 2 in the rightmost frame of a dual accessor library are available for drives.
Row number: Represented as Rz, where R equals the row and z equals its number. Rows 1 - 4 are available for drives. Regardless of whether drives are installed, the row numbering is the same for every frame.

The example below shows the physical addressing for the drives in Frame 2 (F2).