Appendix A. Itdt Support - IBM 3592 Maintenance Information

Appendix A. ITDT support

ITDT is a customer tool and is installed with the IBM device drivers on the customer's server. With the
customer's permission, it can also be used by service personnel to aid in diagnosing tape drive problems.
The IBM Tape Diagnostic tool (ITDT) is available in two versions:
• Standard Edition (ITDT-SE) - The command line version.
• Graphical Edition (ITDT-GE) - The GUI version for the following operating systems -
– Microsoft Windows operating systems
– Linux operating systems
Both versions provide the user with a single diagnostic program for tapeutil applications. Both ITDT-SE
and ITDT-GE contain tapeutil function with ITDT-SE also providing scripting capability.
Tip: The term tapeutil is a synonym for the tool that is delivered with the device driver. For example, this
tool is named tapeutil on UNIX operating systems. It is named ntutil on Microsoft Windows operating
systems.
The available advanced operations that are provided by the IBM Tape Diagnostic tool are run on tape
drives and tape libraries. By using this function, the customer runs maintenance and diagnostic tasks to
determine tape drive issues. This action significantly reduces product downtime and increases
productivity.
The IBM Tape Diagnostic tool is designed to
• Run quick or extended diagnostic tests on tape drives
• Start tape library self-test operations
• Retrieve memory dumps from tape drives and libraries
• Complete a firmware update on tape drives or libraries
• Test the performance of the environment by completely writing a cartridge and measuring performance
• Verify tape drive compression
• Measure system performance
• Retrieve and display cartridge usage information
• Verify the encryption environment
This test is used to verify whether data on the cartridge was written encrypted.
• Scan the system to discover all supported tape and library devices
• Run a connection test
This test is used to verify that all devices are attached properly.
• Run a sequence of subtests to check whether the tape device is defective and output a pass/fail result.
Attention: When this test is run, all data on the cartridge is overwritten.
• Complete a full write function
This function writes the entire cartridge, overwriting all previous data with a selectable block size that
contains either compressible or incompressible data and then outputs performance data.
Attention: When this test is run, all data on the cartridge is overwritten.
• Complete a system test
Writes different block sizes with compressible and incompressible data and then outputs performance
data.
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