Defining an 8mm Device Class

To define a device class for storage pools, first complete the following fields and then click Finish, or click Cancel to end the task.

Device Class Name

Enter the name of the device class to be defined.

Recording Format

Select the recording format to be used when writing data to media. The default is Drive.

Note: This format uses the tape drive hardware compression feature. Depending on the effectiveness of the compression, the actual capacity may be greater than the listed value. 

Format Estimated Capacity Description
Drive Determined by drive capacity. The server selects the highest format that can be supported by the drive on which a volume is mounted.

Avoid specifying DRIVE when a mixture of drives is used within the same library.

For example, do not use this option for a library containing some drives that support recording formats superior to other drives.

8200 2.3GB Uncompressed (standard) format, using standard 112-meter tape cartridges
8500
15m
54m
112m
160m XL
See note above.

600MB
600MB
600MB
2.35GB
2.35GB
2.35GB
5GB or 10.0GB
5GB or 10.0GB
5GB or 10.0GB
7GB

Drives (Read Write)

Eliant 820 (RW)
Exabyte 8500/8500C (RW)
Exabyte 8505 (RW)
Eliant 820 (RW)
Exabyte 8500/8500C (RW)
Exabyte 8505 (RW)
Eliant 820 (RW)
Exabyte 8500/8500C (RW)
Exabyte 8505 (RW)
Eliant 820 (RW)

8700 7.0GB Uncompressed (standard) format, using standard 112-meter tape cartridges
20GB 20GB Uncompressed (standard) format, using standard 112-meter tape cartridges.

Library Name

Select the name of the defined library object that contains the 8mm tape drives used by this device class.

Mount Limit

Enter the maximum number of volumes that can be simultaneously mounted for the device class.

Mount Retention Period

Enter the amount of time, in minutes, to retain an idle volume before dismounting it.

Tape Volume Prefix

Enter the high level qualifier of the file name that the server writes into the media labels. For each volume assigned to this device class, the server uses this prefix to create the data set name.

Example: AB.CD2.E

Estimated Capacity

Enter the estimated capacity for the volumes assigned to this device class. This parameter is optional.

You can specify this parameter if the default estimated capacity for the device class is inaccurate due to compression of data.

The value must be an integer followed by one of these units:

K Kilobyte
M Megabyte
G Gigabyte

For more information on the default estimated capacity, see the Recording Format field description displayed in this help topic.

Mount Wait Period

Enter the maximum length of time, in minutes, to wait for a volume to be mounted.