Information About SME Tape Management
Once provisioned, SME provides transparency to hosts and targets. To manage the paths from a hosts to tape devices, SME uses the following:
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Tape group —A backup environment in the SAN. This consists of all the tape backup servers and the tape libraries that they access.
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Tape device —A tape drive that is configured for encryption.
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Tape volume —A physical tape cartridge identified by a barcode for a given use.
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Tape volume group —A logical set of tape volumes configured for a specific purpose. Using SME, a tape volume group can be configured using a barcode range or a specified regular expression. In an auto-volume group, a tape volume group can be the volume pool name configured at the backup application.
SME provides the capability to export a volume group with an encryption password. This file could later be imported to a volume group. Also, volume group filtering options provide mechanisms to specify what type of information will be included in a specific volume group. For example, you could filter information in a volume group by specifying a barcode range.
The following figure shows the SME tape backup environment.
The following concepts are used in tape management procedures:
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Key management settings
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Auto-volume group
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Key-on-Tape
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Compression
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Configuring volume groups
Note |
If data is written to a partially non-SME encrypted tape, it is left in clear text. When a tape is recycled or relabeled, the tape will be encrypted by SME. |