Checking The Status Of Copy Exported Physical Volumes - IBM TS7700 Series User Manual

August 15, 2017

Checking the Status of Copy Exported Physical Volumes

It is expected that over time, a source TS7700 will have many copy exported physical volumes that have
been taken to an offsite location. The logical volume data on those copy exported physical volumes will age
and expire or be replaced by updated versions. So over time, the amount of active logical volume data on a
copy exported volume will decrease. From time to time, you likely will want to understand the current status
of the copy exported physical volumes, particularly whether or not they should be reclaimed or if one or
more of them no longer contain any active data and can be returned for re-use after the next copy export
operation completes. The TS7700 provides information about the copy exported physical volume in three
ways.
The first and preferred method to check for empty exported media is checking the status file on the export
list file. Every time a copy export operation is performed, records are written to the status file on the export
list file volume that provides specific information about the amount of active data remaining on all physical
volumes with a state of copy-exported.
Note: Even though a copy export operation is performed against a single secondary physical volume pool,
the status file records are written for all physical volumes with a state of copy-exported, regardless of
whether the pool they are in was specified for the current copy export operation.
Here is an example of records from the status file showing the information provided:
#VOL POOL FM MBYTES
JA0026 24 5
JA5301 22 5 493812
JA5204 22 5 493748
JA5328 22 5
JA5223 22 5 492283
JA5297 22 5 493809
JA5376 22 5 317385
JA5257 22 5 493826
JA5365 22 5 23651
SA5366 22 5 13351
JA0101 24 5
JA0145 24 5 493078
The columns of interest here are the fourth column, which indicates the number of MBytes of data written to
the volume when it was exported, and the fifth column, which indicates the percentage of that data that is
still active, in tenths of a percent, rounded down (so a volume with less than 0.1% active data will be
reported as 0). Once there is no longer any active data on the volume, the value in the fourth column will be
set to 0.
In this example if the current copy export operation was for pool 24, you can see that volume JA0026 no
longer has any active data on it. It should be brought back for re-use when the next copy export operation
for pool 24 completes and those volumes are taken off-site. Volumes JA5301 and JA5204 have only 1.1 and
14.6 % active data on them respectively and should be considered candidates for reclaim. All of the other
volumes contain all or mostly active data.
One important thing to note is that for some of the volumes in this example, the amount of data on them
when the volume was exported is less than the capacity of the volume. This is because copy export does not
just export the volumes in the pool that are marked as full. If any volume in the secondary physical volume
pool has any active data on it, regardless of if it is less than the capacity of the media, that volume is
exported. Looking at this example, you could decide that volume JA5328 should also be considered a
© Copyright IBM Corporation, 2017
%UTL MED COPY EXPORTED TIME
0 0 5 2007-03-21-09.07.35
11 5 2007-03-24-08.05.27
146 5 2007-03-24-08.09.31
509 782 5 2007-03-24-08.12.08
899 5 2007-03-31-09.57.22
929 5 2007-03-31-09.49.37
959 5 2007-03-31-09.55.51
973 5 2007-03-31-09.51.44
1000 5 2007-04-04-06.28.24
1000 5 2007-04-04-06.33.24
234 1000 7 2007-04-03-18.42.12
1000 7 2007-04-03-18.47.12
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