Systems and methods to detect physical inventory manipulation in tiered Storage Media Slots of automated Storage Media Libraries (16-Dec-2009)

Systems and methods to detect physical inventory manipulation in tiered Storage Media Slots of automated Storage Media Libraries

The problem solved in this invention is that the inventory algorithm of the automated tape library controller can not detect if a magnetic tape cartridge of the second tier, was manually removed, swapped, replaced or somehow manipulated by a magnetic tape cartridge having a different barcode label and content. If the barcode labels of the first tier did not change in an inventory process after the front door was closed, then the magnetic tape library robot does not verify the barcode labels of the magnetic cartridges in the tier 2. This might cause the inventory of the magnetic tape library to be incorrect within tier 2 and higher.

Another problem solved in this invention is, if multiple magnetic tape cartridges in the tier 1 of different tiered magnetic tape cartridge slots have to be changed by purpose this different tiered slots are inventoried by the magnetic tape library robot. The inventory of one storage column of tiered magnetic tape storage slots takes 10 minutes. E.g. the IBM TS3500 automated tape library can have up to 16 frames . So e.g. changes of magnetic tape cartridges can trigger a re-inventory of all frames that can take up to 800 minutes in the worst case. During the inventory process all incoming new mount requests are paused, which will delay host access to data stored on storage media inside the Storage Media Library.

In this invention two laser scanners, 601 and 602, are added as shown in the block diagram, Figure 600 inside the automated storage media library. As soon as a front door switch, 103, is detecting a door open event of one or more front doors, 102, of the automated storage media library,101, the laser scanner 601 and 602 independently and continuously start scanning the room in front of the storage media slots. If the scanner laser beams of the scanners, 601 and 602, are reflected, the scanner systems detect the reflection. Each scanner provides the angel of the reflection to the library controller, 104. The library controller calculates the storage media slot position and logs this to the added database, 800, of the library controller, 104.

1

The first laser scanner, 601, is located in the first frame of the automated storage media library, 101, on the left upper corner and the second laser scanner, 602, is located in the last frame, 720, on the right upper corner as shown in Figure 700.

2

The distance, 715, between the two laser scanner detectors, 601 and 602, is based on the amount of frames of the automated storage media library and is known by the detection algorithm on the initial setup and configuration data stored in the database, Table 800. The laser scanner detec...