Automated Tape Libraries and Virtual Tape Support › CA Vtape Virtual Tape System

CA Vtape Virtual Tape System

CA Vtape Virtual Tape System is a CA software-based virtual tape solution that enables you to improve the efficiency of your tape storage environment. CA Vtape Virtual Tape System uses your existing tape and DASD hardware to implement virtual tape with mainframe-class reliability and performance.

The CA Vtape Virtual Tape System interface to CA 1 is internal and does not require user exits for use. A CA Vtape Virtual Tape System parameter defined in the VTPARMS member of PARMLIB is used to activate this internal interface. When the Tape Management System Parameter is set to CA1 or AUTO (and CA 1 is discovered on the system), CA Vtape Virtual Tape System activates this internal interface to provide the following benefits:

• The expiration date for the virtual volumes is retrieved directly from CA 1 and used in backstore processing to group together virtual volumes with similar expiration attributes.
• During externalization processing, the container field (ACTVOL) in the virtual volume is updated in the TMC to reflect the physical volume it is written to.

In most cases, CA Vtape Virtual Tape System virtual volumes are handled as real volumes. CA 1 remains in control of scratch processing, which must be coordinated with CA Vtape Virtual Tape System. CA Vtape Virtual Tape System provides a job in hlq.INSTALL(CA1) to perform scratch synchronization. This job must be scheduled to run after the daily TMSCLEAN run.

If ROBSCR is set to YES and CA Vtape is used, the CA-Vtape library must be either link-listed in the system linklist or added as a STEPLIB in the TMSCLEAN proc (TMSCLEAN proc step).