January 9, 2004

South System Tapes—After the Shutdown

Several South system tape owners have expressed concern that they will not be able to move all of their tapes to Titan before the South system is shut down on January 12.

CIT will keep all South system tapes that have not been moved to Titan for an indefinite period of time after the South system shutdown. These tapes will continue to incur a tape storage charge. The Web Tape facility—that customers use to see what South tapes they own and to provide an easy way to move tapes to Titan—will remain after the shutdown.

What to Do If a Job Fails

If you run a job on Titan that requests a South system tape, the job will fail with the message:

NIHTM012 Job cancelled before execution. Data on South tapes must be moved to a Titan tape before use. See web page //silk.nih.gov/TAPE/SOUTH_TAPES.

When this happens, use Web Tape to request that required tape(s) be moved to Titan. Once you have been notified that the tape has been moved, then rerun the job with the new volser.

When South tapes are moved, the entire tape is copied to a Titan tape. All data set names on Titan tapes must have valid data set names (beginning with a valid Titan USERid). Keep in mind that tape ownership and access to tape data sets is determined by the owner (USERid) of the first data set on the tape.

How Long Will These Tapes Be Kept?

Any South tape that has been moved to Titan will be retained by CIT in case problems with the copy are observed later. After the South system shutdown, these tapes will be kept for an additional 6 months so they can be reprocessed if users later detect a problem with tapes on Titan. When the 6 months have passed, these tapes will be degaussed and destroyed.

After a South system tape has been moved to Titan, the old South tape can be accessed by CIT only, and the tape will no longer accrue charges (the new Titan tape is chargeable).

If you have questions about moving your tapes, please contact TASC at 301-594-6248 and ask to speak to a Titan consultant.