Entering tapes
The same procedure is used as for real archive systems, but the virtual tapes are defined at the operator interface for the virtual archive system. However, no physical tapes are included in the virtual archive system.
Removing tapes
This operation must be supported in a virtual archive. Removing a virtual tape, however, does not mean that any physical tapes are truly relocated. A virtual tape is deleted from the virtual archive system via the operator interface.
Importing and exporting tapes
Since no physical operations are performed for virtual tapes, these operations are not supported for virtual archive systems. MAREN does not allow virtual volumes to be relocated from a virtual location.
MAREN supports the ETERNUS CS virtual archive system, which is controlled through the ROBAR software product, as is the real archive system. In contrast to a real archive system, the tapes used by ETERNUS CS are defined as virtual. They are managed by MAREN in the same way as real TAPE-C4 tapes.
Virtual tapes contained in the ETERNUS CS cache can be accessed directly for read and write operations, i.e. a device does not need to be requested.
ETERNUS CS HE exports virtual tapes to real tapes. ETERNUS CS determines the point in time when this is done. Only ETERNUS CS knows which real tape a virtual tape is allocated to. When a tape is accessed, ETERNUS CS has to retrieve it from the real tape and relocate it in the cache, if it no longer exists there.