Tape outage

NESE Tape service will be down or operating with degraded service (no store and recall) Friday from 12 Noon EST until as late as Monday, 2 March at 9 AM. SUMMARY OF ISSUE: NESE Tape service is currently not able to store or recall files to and from tape due to vendor firmware issues in the IBM TS4500 tape library. The issue is related to the library robotics and cartridge database and we do NOT expect any data loss from this issue. The issue is apparently due to an issue with the inventory database related to a recent firmware update. This database can be scrubbed and reconstructed by the library, which will scan the bar code labels on all the cartridges to rebuild the inventory. Association of files in Globus to tapes is handled separately from the tape library and is not affected by the firmware update.

NESE Tape Service is still working with IBM technical support at restoring the inventory. The expected downtime is extended until Tuesday March 3rd, 9am. Apologies for the inconvenvenience.

The tape library outage is further extended to Wednesday March 4th at 9am awaiting a hardware replacement part due today. Data can still be uploaded to lab collections via Globus, but be mindful of the 10 TB buffer file limit. The outage affects storage and recall from tape.