MAREN is a volume archiving system for BS2000 computer centers. MAREN stores all volume-related information in a specific MAREN catalog; there may be one central MAREN catalog for a number of installations. Computer center operation can be optimized by having MAREN interoperate with other BS2000 products such as ROBAR.
The free volumes are managed in free tape pools in MAREN.
Allocation of volumes in MAREN means reserving a volume either explicitly using a MAREN statement or implicitly via the free tape allocation facility. In this case the volumes are, in particular, allocated the user ID and archive directory.
The HSMS archive directory is allocated a MAREN pool in the same way as with the ARCHIVE directory file: the MAREN pool is thus not assigned to the archive name, but to the archive directory. The information on the ARCHIVE directory in the “MAREN” manual [10] thus applies analogously to HSMS archive directories.
Volumes from MAREN free tape pools can be allocated in HSMS in various ways:
In the event of explicit allocation users themselves reserve a free volume with the MAREN statement //RESERVE-FREE-VOLUMES before calling HSMS. They can specify this volume directly as backup volume when data is backed up (VOLUMES=<vsn>).
Implicit reservation is implemented by the automatic free tape allocation facility. The automatic free tape allocation facility is used when VOLUMES=*FROM-OPERATOR is specified. When VOLUMES=*FROM-POOL is specified it is used if the archive’s volume pool is exhausted or has not yet been created. In this case the volume is reserved for the archive directory’s user ID.
If no tape is assigned via the automatic free tape allocation facility, a volume is requested on the console. The operator then allocates a volume that is managed by MAREN.
For detailed information on volume management using MAREN, please refer to the “MAREN” manual [10].