Prepare for virtual tape storage

This topic provides information about meeting the requirements for virtual tape storage and preparing to use it.

To prepare to use virtual tape storage, you need to consider these items:

Parent topic: Start of changeVirtual tapeEnd of change

How much disk space you have

Because virtual images are stored on your disk units, they can quickly use disk space. It is essential that you determine you have enough disk space. The smallest allowable size for a tape image file volume is 48 MB. The largest allowable size is 1,000,000 MB.

To determine how much disk space you have, do the following:

  1. In iSeries™ Navigator, expand My Connections > your iSeries server > Configuration and Service > Hardware > Disk Units > Disk Pools.
  2. Right-click the Disk Pool you want to view, and select Properties.
  3. Select the Capacity tab.

    The Capacity page displays the used space, free space, total capacity, threshold, and percentage of disk space used for the disk pool.

    Note: Disk usage is limited to 95% of capacity. The tape operation will stop with an end of media error when 95% of disk capacity is reached.

    You can also use the Work with Disk Status (WRKDSKSTS) command to determine your free space.

If you need to clean up disk space, see Clean up disk storage space.

Clean up disk storage space

Steps to clean up storage space:
  1. Remove any unused virtual tape volumes by using RMVIMGCLGE KEEP(*NO).
  2. Delete any unused objects.
  3. Save objects by specifying STG(*FREE).
  4. Save the old log versions of QHST that are not currently used and then delete them.
  5. Print or delete spooled files on the system.

The number of volumes of virtual images you need

Steps to determine how many volumes you need:
  1. Determine how much data you plan to store.
  2. Determine the size of each virtual image. Determine image size based on what you plan to do with the tape image file. Keep files small if you want to electronically transfer them to another system.