[rescue] exb210

[Bryan Gurney]

On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:19:36 -0500, <alex at lava-net.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Just aquired an Exabyte exb210 library.  It appears to work, I've tested
> both the drives and everything seems fine.  My question is, how do I
> control the autoloader?  It has 2 serial ports on the back which I asume
> are for  controling the autoloader.  Is this correct?

 From my experience, libraries are usually controlled over the SCSI bus.   
I've worked with a few Qualstar libraries, and when the attached computer  
boots up, it detects the library itself as a device on the SCSI bus.  The  
backup program (Legato Networker, Seagate/Veritas/Symantec Backup Exec,  
QiNetix CommVault, etc.) can usually be configured to control the  
autoloader, since the backup program needs to coordinate which tapes are  
in which slots.

Does the library have a barcode scanner?  That will make inventory control  
in the library a lot easier, since it will just scan the barcodes of all  
the tapes in the libary, instead of having to read the tape label of every  
single tape by loading each and every tape in the drive (this process can  
take a long time, especially if you have hundreds of tapes!).  There are a  
few websites that can ship you custom tape labels, or you can look for the  
premade sheets (though you might be stuck if you need to buy new tapes and  
need a specific code range; this is where the custom sites come in handy).