Advanced Configuration

On This Page

• Overview
• Configuration Settings
• Changing the Serial Numbers of Libraries
• Changing the Number of Libraries, Tape Drives and/or Storage Slots

Overview

Depending on your requirements, you may want to change the number of Firestreamer libraries, tape drives and/or storage slots.

Additional tape libraries may be required, for example, in the following cases:

• You want a second tape library to be a copy library.
• You need to load and unload media without disrupting active backup tasks. Suppose you have Library 1, which is executing a time-consuming backup task. At the same time, you need to restore from offline tape. For your backup software to recognize the newly loaded tape, you normally need to perform an inventory operation, which may cancel all active tasks on the library. To prevent the disruption of the backup task running in Library 1, you can perform the restore operation using Library 2.
• You want different protection groups to be backed up to different types of media. While you can load mixed media into a Firestreamer library, your backup software may not allow you to associate your protection groups with specific storage slots. For example, if you want Protection Group 1 to go to file media on a network share, and Protection Group 2 to go to USB external HDDs in drive media mode, you need to configure two Firestreamer libraries. Library 1 is to be associated with Protection Group 1 and loaded with file media, while Library 2 is to handle the drive media for Protection Group 2.

You may need additional tape drives to handle more protection groups and/or to perform more tape operations simultaneously.

Additional storage slots may be needed to have more tapes in the library to avoid frequent manual reloading of media. You may also want to decrease the number of unused storage slots to avoid the "free tape threshold" warning from your backup software.

Configuration Settings

Firestreamer allows the following configuration settings:

• The number of libraries: 1 to 8. The default value is 1.
• The number of tape drives per library: 1 to 255. The default value is 5.
• The number of storage slots per library: 10 to 60,000. The default value is 200. The number of storage slots cannot be less than the number of tape drives in the same library.

IMPORTANT:

• Your backup software may not expect the configuration of a tape library to change after the library was detected for the first time. If you change the number of tape drives and/or storage slots of an existing library, the backup software may start to behave erratically. To prevent this, Firestreamer always generates new serial numbers for the reconfigured libraries, to ensure that the backup software detects the libraries as new ones.
• Your backup software may not support a very big number of tape drives and/or storage slots, even though Firestreamer allows it. As a result, the backup software may misbehave or become unresponsive.
• An increased number of tape drives and storage slots requires more processing power, so you may want to consider a 64-bit operating system on a multi-processor machine with plenty of RAM.

Changing the Serial Numbers of Libraries
Changing the Number of Libraries, Tape Drives and/or Storage Slots

To change the serial numbers of Firestreamer libraries and the number of libraries, tape drives and/or storage slots, follow the steps below:

1. Back up your backup software's database, if applicable.
2. Open the Configuration tab of the Properties form.
3. Under Pending configuration, click Edit.
4. If needed, change the number of libraries, tape drives and/or storage slots.
5. Click OK.
6. Restart the computer.
7. Perform the library rescan operation in your backup software. When the operation is complete, the backup software should list the reconfigured tape libraries as new ones. The old libraries may also be listed as offline if they are still assigned to protection groups.
8. Reconfigure your protection groups to use the new libraries.