Tim, On some non IBM products it's part of provisioning a LUN and managing it as part of a Tiered Storage strategy, bet it virtualized for CKD or FBA. A little more sophisticated then manually flicking the write protect switch.
Of course none of the implicit write protection applies when the virtual tape is still in your Virtual Tape cache (on disk). I see you've moved to Singapore. I highly recommend the Crazy Elephant Bar... I lived there for 7 years (Singapore, not the bar). Ron > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:ibm-m...@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of > Timothy Sipples > Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 10:18 PM > To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu > Subject: Re: [IBM-MAIN] Disk replacing Tape? > > Ron Hawkins writes: > >I guess you have listed all the reasons why one would use WORM > >disk when replacing tape with disk. > > Maybe not all the reasons, but I am pretty much describing write-once > media, at least logically. Whether it's disk or tape is another question, > but tape can inherently behave that way simply by physically separating the > cartridge from a drive. Which is what it does all the time anyway. Bonus > points for throwing the hardware write-protect switch. > > There's also an actual, technical WORM tape cartridge available. With that > cartridge you don't even have to move anything from the (remote) library. > What's written isn't disappearing, unless somebody physically steals and > destroys the cartridge (or destroys its encryption key). > > I guess what I'm saying is that tape often gets used in places and roles > where this implicit (and sometimes explicit) write-once attribute is > valuable, and often without people necessarily realizing it. For those who > are 100% disk, how do you prevent inadvertant or intentional > write-over/corruption/erase calamities? Do you periodically pull spindles > (in caddies) and send them to a vault, for example? Or whole disk > subsystems? Or some sort of optical storage? Or have a separate team > responsible for enabling write-protect settings at the disk storage > hardware console? Or do you just punt and hope for the best? Or it doesn't > matter, because the data could vaporize and it'd still be OK? > > - - - - - > Timothy Sipples > Resident Architect (Based in Singapore) > STG Value Creation and Complex Deals Team > IBM Growth Markets > E-Mail: timothy.sipp...@us.ibm.com > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
