Overview of Simulation and Forecasting Facility

The Simulation and Forecasting facility consists of two components.

• Simulation procedure CTMSIM
• Tape Pull List procedure CTMTAPUL

Simulation procedure CTMSIM tests the potential impact of proposed changes to the configuration or production environment. It answers "What if?" questions, such as:

"What if we ...

• add or remove four tape drives from the system?"
• increase the CPU power by 30%?"
• run a particular set of applications daily instead of weekly?"

The Simulation procedure can also be used to forecast production runs such as the next 24-hour run, end-of-month run, and so on. In this way, possible irregularities in the schedule can be foreseen.

The CTMTAPUL Tape Pull List procedure creates a report of all tapes to be mounted for a specific period. By running the procedure on a daily basis, all tapes required for the daily production run can be prepared in advance for the operator or the robotic tape library.

The Tape Pull List procedure uses the output of the Simulation procedure as input. Therefore, the Simulation procedure must be executed before the Tape Pull List procedure can be executed. However, the Simulation procedure can be executed without executing the Tape Pull List procedure.