Are there CTA customers who use SlotIQ on Spectra Logic TFinity tape libraries?
We have had it enabled with Enstore and left it enabled with CTA because we had seen performance improvements (compared with having it turned off) while using it with Enstore. However, we are now running into cases where cta-smc thinks a drive is empty, but cta-taped sees upon startup that there is still a tape in the mouth of the drive (ejected but not unloaded) and will not go into an UP state.
This is to report that at CERN we are running with SlotIQ enabled on all 3 Spectra Logic tape libraries. That is on those still running Bluescale but also on the new one with LumOS.
Normally everything works fine, the only problem happens when you reset/reboot the tape drive without removing the unloaded cartridge.
Prior to any such operation, it is necessary to run “Resolve SlotIQ” advance procedure which will physically remove all those unloaded tapes from the drives and put them into Terapack slots.
Unrelated to CTA, but you should know it - for LumOS, there is currently an issue (already reported to Spectra Logic) - the automatic cleaning does not work. Manual cleaning of a drive is required. This should be fixed in the next LumOS release this summer, until then they recommend to run without SlotIQ.
Bottom line: SlotIQ offers performance improvements which are worth the few hiccups which we know how to handle / for which ww have workarounds.