On Sun, 8 May 2011 23:46:11 -0500, Russell Witt <[email protected]> wrote:
>Fred, > >First, to make sure I understand what you are looking for; is the tape file >you want to copy already at 256K or do you want to re-block an existing >tape-file up to 256K? The reason is that some tape copy utilities (CA >Copycat for example) can support files with an existing 256K blocksize; but >cannot re-block a file. > >Also, which tape management system do you currently use? If you have CA 1 or >CA TLMS; then there is CA Copycat. If you have IBM's DFSMSrmm, there is >Tivolie Tape Optimizer. And there are other options (Innovations FATSCOPY >and OpenTech's TAPECOPY that can work on almost all tape management >systems). Of course, all of these are licensed products. > >If you want to do this yourself, without getting a new licensed product; >then IEBGENER works fine and supports 256K blocksizes. And of course, both >ICEGENER (for DFSort users) and SYNCGENR (for SYNCSORT users) are also >available and can copy much faster than IEBGENER. But, none of these options >will automatically re-catalog the file to the new volume or (optionally) >update the Tape Management system to maintain the original creation >date/time/jobname. But, I am not sure that is important to you or not. > >Russell Witt >CA 1 L2 Support Manager > Russell and others, I guess I wasnt too clear in what I was after. Firstly, the tool to copy the tape must be FREE. I know there are good vendor tools to do what I want, but this site isnt going to spend any money on getting them. Secondly, I would like to copy the entire tape as-is. Basically tell the utility to "duplicate this tape". Many of the files on the source tape are 256K. I don't want to reblock them. I would prefer to maintain expiry date info and have RMM's VRS control expiration. I don't care that the datasets will not get cataloged. I know I can IEBGENER etc individual files to a new tape. But on the 1 TB raw capacity tapes we are using, we have 5,000 files and more on a tape, and I would prefer not to have to code JCL to copy each of those files! In the absence of anything better, I will write REXX to create such JCL, using RMM info about the tape datasets as the source. I know that COPYMODS and related from the CBT Tape will do pretty much what I want, but 64K blocksizes is as big as it handles, from what I read in their doco. We are RMM, but I don't know that this makes much difference. Hoping for a miracle.... Regards, Fred Schmidt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
