MSL 6480 LTO9 Drive mail slots

[ledvan]

Hi Guys,

our company recently purchased a MSL6480 Library with LTO9 drive with expansions containing 480 Cartridges with 36 Drives. i would like to know how many mail slots should i enable, normally each library has 1 mail slot(in our scenario 6 libraries so 6 mail slots). what is bothering me is the fact when i enable the mailslots on the library, 10 slots filled with cartridges are no longer accessible in the Veeam software(tape infrastructure) per each mailslot. can i limit this number to a shorter count ? and even after enabling mailslots i try to import those slots in veeam, it gives an error "importing tape from I/E port Failed, no free slots"?we get this error cause we filled all the slots with cartridge?

regards,

Hirosh

[Vinky_99]

Hello @ledvan,

The HPE MSL6480 Library with LTO9 drives and expansions you have purchased contains 480 cartridges and 36 drives. Typically, each library has one mail slot, so in your case with six libraries, you would have six mail slots.

When you enable the mail slots on the library, it is expected behavior that the slots filled with cartridges become inaccessible in the Veeam software. This is because the purpose of the mail slots is to provide a dedicated area for importing and exporting tapes without interfering with the regular tape operations.

Regarding the limitation of the number of slots affected by enabling the mail slots, it depends on the specific configuration and capabilities of your library. The MSL6480 Library allows you to configure the number of mail slots, but the exact procedure for doing so may vary. I recommend consulting the documentation or contacting HPE support for detailed instructions on how to configure the mail slots to limit the number of affected slots.

As for the error message you mentioned, "importing tape from I/E port Failed, no free slots," it suggests that all the available slots, including the mail slots, are filled with cartridges. This can occur if you have already used up all the available slots in the library. To import tapes from the I/E (Import/Export) port, you would need to free up some slots by either removing tapes from the drives or importing tapes back into the library to create free slots.

Hope this gives some insights! Let me know..

[Barry_Reider · Accepted solution]

@ledvan, The MSL6480 library is capable of having mailslots (import/export elements) either enabled or disabled in each module. When a mailslot is enabled in a module, the first column of tapes (10 tapes) becomes I/E elements (reducing the number of storage slots available). Your library has 6 modules, so you can enable 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60 slots of your 480 total storage slots as I/E slots. This is the level of granularity that mailslots can be enabled in the hardware. Once you have the 10 (or more) slots enabled as mailslots, then those 10 slots can be assigned to a partition in the library on a per-slot basis. For example, if you had 3 logical library partitions set up, you could enable mailslots on a single module in the library, and assign 3 of those slots to partition 1, 3 slots to partition 2, and 4 slots to partition 3. So, in summary - mailslots in an MSL6480 can be enabled in 10 slots increments in hardware, and assigned in single-slot increments in logical partitioning. 

As for your Veeam error "importing tape from I/E port Failed, no free slots". That sounds like all available storage slots in the logical library partition are full. If you look at the library inventory, does it show any free storage slots?