Scratch pool with multiple media types

[W4]

Greetings,

In my environment I have both LTO4 and LTO5 media and am looking to add a scratch pool to simplify tape management. Given that these need to be in separate volume groups, and that we can only have a single scratch pool, what is the process to put in place a scratch pool for both LTO4 and LTO5 tapes?

Thanks in advance,

W4

[Genericus]

They can share a scratch pool, because they will have different HCART types / values. 

NOTE - HCART values are NOT hard coded, you set those your self. 

Say you set Drive and media like: LTO4 as HCART and LTO5 as HCART2, when you request media for a drive, it will pull the correct type, no problem.

 I have LTO3,4,5 in one scratch pool, works fine.

[Marianne]

If you have different barcode labels for the different media types, you can create barcode rules for all new media to be added to the Scratch pool.

e.g. 
A00 - LTO4
B00 - LTO5

Barcode rule 1:

Barcode tag : A
Media type: HCART
Volume Pool: Scratch

Barcode rule 2:

Barcode tag : B
Media type: HCART2
Volume Pool: Scratch

[Genericus]

Marianne is correct, you should use bar code rules to set the HCART types.

You may have to manually move tapes to the scratch pool if you manually assigned them to another pool already, as they expire.