Media ID Generation

[punbs]

Hi Team, I am not getting the concept of Media ID Generation options.

1. I have a Media/Volume with a barcode of 8 Character. Requirement is Media ID to be equal to Media Barcode. How to come by this.

2. Is NB 7.5 will supports only media ID of 6-Chars.

3. What are the different type of rule we can create.

4. What are the function of # and : in this rule naming. How to use this.

Can any one explain this.

[Marianne]

NBU can read up to 13 characters of the Barcode and store in the Barcode field, but only 6 characters in the Media ID field.

Media ID must be unique. 

You need to hoose which 6 characters must be stored in NBU Media Id field.
This decision must be made before new media is added for the first time.

I prefer to use the first 6 chars and have Media ID Generation rule like this:

MEDIA_ID_BARCODE_CHARS = 0 8 1:2:3:4:5:6

(Robot 0, barcode length = 8, use 1st 6 characters).

I have never used the #...  (should be explained in Admin Guide)

[mph999 · Accepted solution]

The # allows a character to be used in the media id that does not exsist in the barcode. Eg. barcode AA1234L4 media id rule 1:2:3:4:5:6 would give a media ID of AA1234 media id rule of 1:2:3:4:5:#M woud give a media ID of AA123M media id rule of 1:2:3:P:4:5 would give a media ID of AA1P23 I have never seen it used and do NOT recommend that it is used unless you have a very very good reason as I can image it causing much confusion. As Marianne explains she likes t use the first x6 characters of the barcode for the media id, and I think it is reasonable to suggest that this is the most common way media ids are configured. Most drives in use are LTO drives, and the barcodes for these should have L1 / L2 / L3 etc at the end to show the drive type - however, this can be ignored for the media id, hence why usually the first x6 characters are usually used. While I am here a few words about barcodes ... Great care must be taken when deciding barcodes, I personally think the first two characters should be two letters, eg AA, AB. This allows a way to group tapes by location / or type : For example, the first character could be site location, or library location and the second character could be LTO verstion. AC - Library A / LTO3 AD - Library A / LTO4 This way, when a new tape type is used (eg LTO5) barcode rules can be set to match the tape type to the correct density in the barcode rules. Barcode rule for AC and AD could be set the tapes to different densities. If you only had numbers at the beginning of the barcodes: 000001L4 000002L4 000003L4 you could end up with 000004L5 ... and no easy way to set up barcode rules ... as all tapes start 00 Martin