Managing Your Tape Gateway - Amazon Storage Gateway
Understanding Tape Status
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Managing Your Tape Gateway

Following, you can find information about how to manage your Tape Gateway resources in Amazon Storage Gateway.

Topics

Understanding Tape Status

Each tape has an associated status that tells you at a glance what the health of the tape is. Most of the time, the status indicates that the tape is functioning normally and that no action is needed on your part. In some cases, the status indicates a problem with the tape that might require action on your part. You can find information following to help you decide when you need to act.

Understanding Tape Status Information in a VTL

A tape's status must be AVAILABLE for you to read or write to the tape. The following table lists and describes possible status values.

Status Description Tape Data Is Stored In
CREATING The virtual tape is being created. The tape can't be loaded into a tape drive, because the tape is being created. —
AVAILABLE The virtual tape is created and ready to be loaded into a tape drive. Amazon S3
IN TRANSIT TO VTS The virtual tape has been ejected and is being uploaded for archive. At this point, your Tape Gateway is uploading data to Amazon. If the amount of data being uploaded is small, this status might not appear. When the upload is completed, the status changes to ARCHIVING.

Amazon S3
ARCHIVING The virtual tape is being moved by your Tape Gateway to the archive, which is backed by S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Glacier Deep Archive. This process happens after the data upload to Amazon is completed. Data is being moved from Amazon S3 to S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
DELETING The virtual tape is being deleted. Data is being deleted from Amazon S3
DELETED The virtual tape has been successfully deleted. —
RETRIEVING The virtual tape is being retrieved from the archive to your Tape Gateway.
Note

The virtual tape can be retrieved only to a Tape Gateway.

 Data is being moved from S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Glacier Deep Archive to Amazon S3
RETRIEVED The virtual tape is retrieved from the archive. The retrieved tape is write-protected. Amazon S3
RECOVERED

The virtual tape is recovered and is read-only.

When your Tape Gateway is not accessible for any reason, you can recover virtual tapes associated with that Tape Gateway to another Tape Gateway. To recover the virtual tapes, first deactivate the inaccessible Tape Gateway.

Amazon S3
IRRECOVERABLE The virtual tape can't be read from or written to. This status indicates an error in your Tape Gateway. Amazon S3

Determining Tape Status in an Archive

You can use the following procedure to determine the status of a virtual tape in an archive.

To determine the status of a virtual tape

  1. Open the Storage Gateway console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/storagegateway/home.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Tapes.

  3. In the Status column of the tape library grid, check the status of the tape.

    The tape status also appears in the Details tab of each virtual tape.

Following, you can find a description of the possible status values.

Status Description
ARCHIVED The virtual tape has been ejected and is uploaded to the archive.
RETRIEVING The virtual tape is being retrieved from the archive.
Note

The virtual tape can be retrieved only to a Tape Gateway.

RETRIEVED The virtual tape has been retrieved from the archive. The retrieved tape is read-only.

For additional information about how to work with tapes and VTL devices, see Working With Tapes.