Attribute

Definition

Volume Serial Number

Volume serial number (VSN or volser) assigned to the media by its external label. If the library does not supply the volser, STA provides one composed of Library Serial Number:Physical Address.

Note – This field links to the Media – Overview screen, detail view, which displays all available detail for this media. See “Media Overview and Analysis Screens”.

Media Start Tracking

Date and time when STA first began tracking this volume serial number (VSN or volser). If the volser is used on more than one cartridge, this field reflects the earliest start date available.

Media Stop Tracking

Date and time when STA stopped tracking this volume serial number (VSN or volser). This is when STA determined the volser no longer exists in any of the monitored libraries and updated the volser status from “missing” to “removed”.

Media Type

Media type short description. For example, LTO1, T10000B, etc. UNKNOWN indicates media with a missing or unreadable external volume serial number (VSN or volser) label.

Note – Type is UNKNOWN for all DLT and SDLT media, for which STA does not compute health.

Media Manufacturer

Media manufacturer. Possible values are “STK” for StorageTek enterprise media, or “LTO” for LTO media.

Media Manufacturer Serial Number

Media serial number assigned by the manufacturer.

Note – STA does not have this information until the media has been mounted in a drive.

Media Health Indicator

Media health. This is a point-in-time value computed by STA analytics. It reflects a variety of factors, such as the media’s error history, read margin, and write efficiency.

This value includes all data up to and including the last completed exchange. It is updated immediately after each completed exchange involving this media.

Possible values, in order of degrading health:

Note – STA only receives information about errors detected by a drive while performing read/write activity to the media. STA does not receive information about errors that may occur in the data path or host applications.

Media Suspicion Level

Calculated suspicion level for the media. The higher the number, the higher the probability that this media needs attention.

Data Compression Ratio

Compression ratio for the exchange. Displayed as a ratio of total compressed data read or written by the drive, to total uncompressed data sent or received by the drive.

Exchange Recording Technique

Recording method used by the drive during the exchange.

Duplicate Detected

STA has detected that the volume serial number (VSN or volser) of the media used in the exchange is a duplicate. This alert appears only on the exchange in which the duplicate is detected.

Duplicate volsers occur when two pieces of media with the same media type have the same volser and two different manufacturer serial numbers. If this alert appears multiple times for the same volser, it is likely there is more than one physical cartridge with the same media type and volser label in the tape environment. If it only appears once for the volser, it may be that the volser label from a retired cartridge has been re-used on a new cartridge.