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Tivoli Storage Manager supports many devices for storing data. Devices known to Tivoli Storage Manager may be devices that exist as real physical devices, such as a disk drive or a tape drive. Devices may also be logical devices, such as files on a disk (FILE device type) or storage on another server (SERVER device type).
Tivoli Storage Manager represents both physical and logical devices with administrator-defined storage objects: device classes. The device class, which you define when you configure devices for Tivoli Storage Manager, contains information for the management of devices and media. Each type of device requires a device class.
For details about devices that are supported, visit the Tivoli Storage Manager Web site at this URL:
Magnetic disk devices are the only devices in the random access category. All disk devices share the same Tivoli Storage Manager device type: DISK. Tivoli Storage Manager has a predefined DISK device class.
Tape devices can have a device type of either 3590 or CARTRIDGE.
Figure 2. Devices Are Represented by Device Classes
Tivoli Storage Manager allows administrators to create volumes on server disk space that have the characteristics of sequential access volumes such as tape. Tivoli Storage Manager supports these sequential volumes through the FILE device type.
You may want to use FILE volumes as a way to use disk storage without having to define volumes to Tivoli Storage Manager. FILE volumes can also be useful when transferring data for purposes such as electronic vaulting.
You can create volumes that exist as archived files in the storage of another Tivoli Storage Manager server. The volumes created are a special type of sequential access volume called a virtual volume. Virtual volumes have the characteristics of sequential access volumes such as tape. Tivoli Storage Manager supports virtual volumes through the SERVER device type. You must define a device class and a server that will store the data.
Virtual volumes are useful for purposes such as the following: