“Location” is understood to include:
a central archive, identified by means of the name “CENTRAL”;
a system as the processing location. No entry in the location table is required in this case and can be omitted;
miscellaneous locations (e.g. archive systems or special archives), identified by means of freely selectable names such as “TRESOR”, “BRAND”.
Exported tapes are identified by means of an export date; they are given the temporary location “CENTRAL”, since they are usually exported via the central archive. The actual location of the exported tapes can be stored in the EXPORT-ADDRESS field of the catalog entry.
Operating mode for locations
In addition to manually operated locations, MAREN also supports storage locations served by archive systems (see chapter “MAREN and archive systems”). To enable MAREN to detect whether it should send its jobs to the console or to an archive system via ROBAR, an “operating mode” must be allocated to the location:
| MANUAL | location to be operated manually | |
| ROBAR-1 | for archive systems from Quantum Corp. | |
| ROBAR-2 | for the archive system ETERNUS CS HE from FUJITSU | |
| EXTERNAL | for a location of a group of tapes. The group is, for example, set up in a separate archive that is to be operated manually. The tapes in this archive should be processed only on the tape devices located there and not be mixed with tapes from other archives. |
The administrator defines the operating mode with the MODIFY-MAREN-PARAMETERS statement, OPERATING-MODE operand.
Location identification
Locations are defined in the system-specific MAREN parameters, see section “Setting MAREN parameters” (Configuration on the local system).
Each location is identified by the following:
its name (a maximum of 8 characters; permitted characters: A..Z, 0..9 and the special characters $, # and @);
its type (REMOTE or LOCAL);
its mode of operation (manual or operated through an archive system, see above).
Location table
A location table exists for each system. The location table belongs to the system-specific parameters. It is therefore processed using the MARENADM statement MODIFY-MAREN-PARAMETERS.
The location called “CENTRAL” is always included in the location table.
In the MAREN system, 24 different locations can be managed. The locations are stored in the table with their name, symbolic name and type, and their operating mode.
The default value for the location is defined by the DEFAULT-HOME-LOCATION operand in the MARENADM statement MODIFY-MAREN-PARAMETERS.
The MARENADM statement SHOW-MAREN-PARAMETERS outputs information on the location table.
Any number of locations beyond the 24 contained in the location table are supported. These locations are, however, subject to certain restrictions.
These locations cannot be accessed via symbolic location names.
Effects: none.The location ID LOCAL is always assumed for these locations.
Effects: processing of tapes from these locations can never be aborted with the error messageMAR4125.This restriction is of no importance if all remote locations (e.g. fireproof cellar) are entered in the location table.