Archive systems can physically access the tapes in their tape inventory (archive) using mechanical installations. They can react to mount requests without the manual intervention of a human operator. For the process of mounting tapes to be automated, the mount requests have to be evaluated by a software program and converted into control commands which the archive system can interpret.
A BS2000 system can be linked to an archive system in two different ways:
The control commands are sent to the archive system through the data interface of the BS2000 system.
After the console messages have been evaluated, the control commands are output to the archive system through an interface.
These two methods are supported by two subsystems which complete MAREN tape management for physical tape processing. MAREN identifies an archive system through its location name and operating mode. I.e. the location tells MAREN whether a tape belongs to the inventory of a specific archive system and how communication with the archive system must be realized.
In the MAREN catalog, the tapes are listed by their archive number and in the archive system by the bar code labels attached to them. Since the archive number (VSN, volume serial number) must be identical with the VSL (volume software label) in BS2000 the tape has to be started with a VSL in the archive system which is identical with the archive number of the tape requested.
Support via ROBAR
The ROBAR-DCAM non-privileged BS2000 application was developed to support archive system control via a specific link.
ROBAR is installed as a client/server system. The client is installed as a BS2000 DCAM application to query the console messages. The server is installed on a separate system and converts the requests sent by the client into control commands for the archive system.
In the standard shipment, ROBAR supports control commands for the real archive systems from Quantum Corp. and for the virtual archive system ETERNUS CS from FUJITSU.
ROBAR processes the console messages sent by the system to the console directly. MAREN is not a prerequisite.
If MAREN is available, ROBAR also supports MAREN messages which the archive system allocated to tape processing.