IBM TS7700 3.2 Supports Up to 496 Virtual Tape Drives

IBM TS7700 Release 3.2 has been enhanced to include support for additional virtual tape drives.

It includes 256 logical devices (or virtual tape drives) in 16 subsystems (LRUs, LIBPORT-IDs, CUs) per cluster. Release 3.2 increases the number of supported virtual tape drives to a maximum of 496 devices. These additional devices may be purchased with feature #5275, Additional Virtual Devices.

Each instance of this feature supports one logical subsystem with sixteen logical tape drives. A maximum of fifteen Additional Virtual Device features may be installed on a single cluster.

8Gb FICON adapters (features #3438 or #3439) must be installed in a cluster before these additional devices can be defined. Existing configurations with 4Gb FICON adapters will not support these additional devices.

All clusters in a grid must be running Release 3.2, or higher, before this feature can be operational. The same quantity of Additional Virtual Device features does not need to exist on every cluster. For example, this means that one cluster can have the standard 256 virtual devices while another has 384 devices.

RPQ 8B3643 must be requested and approved together with the first instance of feature #5275.

Planned availability date: December 5, 2014