Use STA to help answer common questions about the performance of the library system and the state of drives and media.
| Typical Question | Task |
|---|---|
| Which drives and media have had the most errors in the last 30 days? Are there any correlations between the two? | Identify Drives With the Most Errors |
| Which drives have had the most errors this week? Have their error rates gone up? | Analyze Drive Failure Trends |
| Which drives have had significantly declining efficiency over time? | Analyze Drive Efficiency |
| Is the drive that failed twice today the same one that caused problems two months ago? | Analyze Drive Failure Trends |
| At 9:00 am today, one of our tape jobs experienced an error. Which drive and media were involved? Have they also experienced other errors? | Identify Media and Drives Involved with Job Errors |
| What critical errors were reported to STA last month? Is the total number trending up, down, or staying stable? | View Trends in Critical Drive and Media Errors |
| How many libraries, drives, or media are in my tape system environment? How many drives or media of a particular type are in my tape system environment? | Determine Number of Libraries, Drives, or Media in the System |
| Which are the top three drives in terms of utilization? | Analyze Drive Utilization |
| Which types of media are in short supply? Do I have an oversupply of any type? | Identify Shortages or Surpluses of Media |
| Am I likely to need more media, drives, or storage cells next year? If so, how many? | Identify Shortages or Surpluses of Media |
| Which types of drives or media are used the most in my tape system? | Analyze Drive Utilization |
| Which library in my tape environment is the busiest? Which is the least busy? | Report Library Activity Levels |
| Which media are over 90 percent full? How do I generate a list that can be used to create a script to eject them from the library? | Identify Media that is Approaching Capacity |
| Have all my drives been upgraded to the latest firmware? | Report Drive Firmware Levels |
Follow best practices when investigating issues with drives and media.
Tape alert counts for the last exchange are available on the Drive, Media, and Exchange Overview screens. To determine the nature of a tape alert, go to the Exchanges Overview Detail View and review the following sections:
Exchange Alerts – Severe
Exchange Alerts – Warning
Exchange Alerts – Informational
See Data Reference for detailed tape alert descriptions.
Media must be in a library storage cell or a drive at the time of a data collection for it to be detected. Media in a transient location is not detected by a data collection and therefore may not appear on the STA screens.
If media is unexpectedly missing, see How STA Handles "Missing" Media for some troubleshooting steps.
If you suspect a problem with a drive, save details of its recent activity to a PDF file. You can include this file in any inquiries to Oracle Service.
On the Drives Overview screen, select the Drive Serial Number active link to display the Detail View.
Save the resulting display as a PDF file.
Exchange detail may provide valuable information about a drive issue.
On the Drives Overview screen, select View, then Columns. then Show More Columns.
Move Drive Dismounts (30 days) into the Visible Columns column, then click OK.
Select the Drive Dismounts (30 days) aggregate count link for the drive. You are taken to the Exchanges Overview screen, filtered to show all the exchanges included in the count.
On the Exchanges Overview List View, select Columns, then Show All.
Select Export, then Exchange.xls to export the data to Excel format.
A fixable condition may stand out to you as you scroll through the worksheet columns. For example, you may notice that the "Media Directory Invalid" error appears on multiple media.
For each area of concern or activity you have accomplished in STA, document the quick steps to do it. For example:
Determining which drives have been cleaned over the last month
Determining which drives have been idle more than a week
Determining if some media need to be retired
How to do year-end planning and new media purchase estimates
Use the procedures in the preceding sections as starting points.