LTO4/5/6 - How To Determine if a LTO4, LTO5, or LTO6 Drive is Currently in an Encrypting/Decrypting Mode

Asset ID:	1-71-1638439.1
Update Date:	2017-06-07
Keywords:

Solution Type Technical Instruction Sure

Solution 1638439.1 : LTO4/5/6 - How To Determine if a LTO4, LTO5, or LTO6 Drive is Currently in an Encrypting/Decrypting Mode

Applies to:

HP LTO4 Tape Drive - Version All Versions to All Versions [Release All Releases]
IBM LTO4 Tape Drive - Version All Versions to All Versions [Release All Releases]
HP LTO5 Tape Drive - Version All Versions to All Versions [Release All Releases]
IBM LTO5 Tape Drive - Version All Versions to All Versions [Release All Releases]
HP LTO6 Tape Drive - Version All Versions to All Versions [Release All Releases]
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Goal

LTO4/5/6: How To Determine if a LTO4, LTO5, or LTO6 Drive is Currently in an Encrypting/Decrypting Mode.

Solution

For the IBM LTO4, LTO5, and LTO6 drives the below is the requirement for how the LED should report the status from the Belisarius card on whether the drive is encrypting or decrypting data:

ENCRYPTION LED
There will be provision for one LED to indicate that Belisarius (encryption card) has requested and received an encryption key from the KMS/OKM, and has successfully sent the key on down to the tape drive itself. This means that the tape drive is now in possession of a key which may be used for encryption or decryption. Note that a key will only be requested when a piece of media has already been loaded and a read or write operation is about to start.
This encryption LED will be turned ON when the key is successfully received by the drive and turned OFF when the current piece of media is unloaded (at which point the key will be deleted from the drive's memory).

For the HP LTO4, LTO5, and LTO6 drives the following is how the LED will display the status of the drives' encrypting or decrypting state:

When the drive is enrolled and empty, the Encryption LED is OFF.
When the drive is enrolled and a cartridge is loaded and has not written or read encrypted data yet , the Encryption LED is OFF.
When the drive is enrolled and a cartridge is loaded and the drive is writing or reading encrypted data, the Encryption LED is ON.
When the drive is enrolled and a cartridge is loaded and has previously written or read encrypted data, but is not not writing or reading encrypted data, the Encryption LED is ON.
The Encryption LED will go OFF with the next tape unload and stay OFF until a cartridge is loaded and the drive writes or reads encrypted data.

Attachments

This solution has no attachment