Turn off tape library when not in use?

[Dale_Mahalko_LH]

Is there a way within Backup Exec to tell a tape library to physically power down when it is not needed, and for Backup Exec to re-detect a library that has been powered down and then restarted prior to running a backup job?

I am getting quite frustrated with LTO hardware. I find it to still worth using for onsite backup, and it has the added advantage of being generally immune to damage from lightning strikes. Lightning might blow up a drive array but it won't affect a dismounted cartridge.

However LTO library hardware is built in the dumbest manner possible. The drive is sensitive to dusty environments and will have a short and quick death after about a year, in a server room that is not kept essentially sterile and dust free.

No LTO library that I am aware of is equipped with a HEPA air inlet filter, and the libraries are designed to be powered on and running all the time even when idle, so LTO libraries are dust magnets, which is just ridiculous.

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It seems to me that all I can really do here is to physically power off a tape library when it is not needed. This stops the fans so it stops sucking in dust.

If the library is only needed for 6 hours a day, that is 18 hours it can be completely powered off and not inhaling damaging dust.

[Larry_Fine]

I don't recall any tape robots that had internal power-on and power-off timers.  So you would need to resort to some sort of brute force external timer on the robot.

You would also need to deal with device connectivity, so unless you are powering down the Backup Exec server, it gets complicated.  At a minimum, you would need to start (or restart) Backup Exec services after the tape robot had been powered on, assuming it got discovered properly by  Windows.