1. User's Guide
  2. Understanding STA Data
  3. Understand How STA Handles Changes to the Tape Environment
  4. How STA Handles Duplicate Volume Serial Numbers

How STA Handles Duplicate Volume Serial Numbers

In STA, all history for a particular piece of media is tied to its volume serial number (volser). Volsers should be unique across all monitored libraries. Duplicate volsers will result in co-mingling of data for different pieces of media.

Volsers are considered duplicates if the media has the same volser, domain, and media type. Domain identifies the media format, and type identifies the version, as illustrated in the following examples:

  • LTO6 – "LTO" is the domain and "6" is the type.
  • T10000T1 – "T10000" is the domain and "T1" is the type.

The Duplicate Detected flag appears on the Exchanges Overview screen and indicates that the volser involved in the exchange is a duplicate — the media has the same volser as another media of the same domain and type but with a different media serial number (MSN). If you find exchanges with this flag, you should investigate and determine whether to assign a different volser to one of the media, as the data for the two will be co-mingled.

Note:

Only some drive types and firmware levels report MSNs; therefore, with some drive types, STA may not receive all the information necessary to detect duplicate volsers.