Although Windows Power Shell is not a requirement & an optional component, its highly recommended specially if you are planning to create advance scripts. Follow the few steps below to install Windows Power Shell.

1- Obtain Windows Power Shell installer from Microsoft Website.

2- Double Click the Windows Power Shell Installer.

3- Click next to start windows power shell installation.

4- Agree to the Windows Power Shell Agreement & hit Next

5- Wait for Windows Power Shell Installation to complete

6- Hit Finish to close the Windows Power Shell installation completion page.

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Back to: IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager Tutorial Index…

As stated in earlier section, our setup was using MS Windows 2003 64-bit SP2 & MS SQL Server 2005 64-bit SP3. The required hotfixes for this setup is illustrated below:

– Microsoft hotfix KB 919117 is required when performing VSS Instant Restore operations in a Windows Server 2003 cluster environment.

– Microsoft hotfix KB 952790 is required when performing VSS Instant Restore operations in a Windows Server 2008 non-cluster environment.

Note: The above patches have a different version for 64-bit & 32-bit. Please obtain the required fixes for your system from Microsoft Website & install them as per Microsoft instruction.

Note: If your setup is running an older version of Windows or SQL Server you might be required to install additional hotfixes.…

At this stage your DS8000 should be ready to be used with FCM, for more information on preparing your DS8000 to be used with FCM please go back to Section 3. This section will cover preparing your MS SQL Server for FCM installation. The environment used to prepare this guide as mentioned earlier was running Windows 2003 64-bit SP2 with MS SQL 2005 Server 64-bit SP3. Other versions of Windows & SQL should follow the same path of host preparation & FCM installation, but might require an additional SQL or Windows hotfixes.

This guide assumes that the reader is familiar with Microsoft Windows & MS SQL Server. It assumes that Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3 has been already setup on a Windows 2003 SP2 either in a stand alone or a clustered environment prior to proceeding any further with this document.…

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for SQL can be used in many different combinations of different versions of Windows, different versions of SQL, as well many different combinations of hardware. In order to cover the full details of installing & configuring IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for SQL in DS8000 enviornment, the setup showing in figure 2-1 & explained below will be assumed in further chapters.

• SQLnode01_POC:

SQLnode01_POC is a System X machine running Windows 2003 64-bit               SP2. It’s the first node of SQL 2005 64-bit SP3 cluster.

• SQLnode02_POC:

SQLnode02_POC is a System X machine running Windows 2003 64-bit               SP2. It’s the second node of SQL 2005 SP3 cluster.

• SQLsrv01_POC:

SQLsrv01_POC is a System X machine running Windows 2003 64-bit                   SP2.…

Before you install Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager, ensure your system meets the minimum hardware, software and operating system requirements. Review the following prerequisite information before attempting to perform any installation tasks.

_Minimum hardware requirements

Table 2.1 Minimum hardware requirements:

Note: Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager also supports hardware that is required when using the Windows System Provider or a Microsoft-compliant software or hardware VSS Provider.

– In order to use the hardware provider provided by IBM Storage, you will have to obtain the optional FlashCopy License for your storage. FlashCopy feature on your storage must be enabled prior to using your IBM storage hardware provider. For more information about enabling FlashCopy on your IBM Storage please refer to your storage documentation.

– If using hardware provider a sufficient free space capacity must be present on your storage to accommodate for storing flashcopies.…

The Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager integrates with Microsoft VSS – Volume Shadow Copy Services – to protect MS SQL Server databases & logs. Tivoli FlashCopy manager help you back up and restore data to and from local shadow volumes with automated tasks, utilities, and interfaces.

_Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services – MS VSS Service

The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a Microsoft component that is provided with the Windows operating system. VSS manages and directs the Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager VSS requestor and other VSS software applications.

Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager backup and restore operations use the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service technology to produce online snapshots (point-in-time consistent copies) of Exchange or SQL data, and to restore those snapshots to a specified location.…

In today’s business world, where application servers are operational 24 hours a day, the data on these servers must be fully protected. You can’t afford to lose any data, but you also can’t afford to stop these critical systems for hours so you can protect the data adequately.As the amount of data that needs protecting continues to grow exponentially and the need to keep the downtime associated with backup to an absolute minimum, IT processes are at their breaking point.

Data volume snapshot technologies, such as IBM FlashCopy®, can help minimize the impact caused by backups and provide near instant restore capabilities. Many storage systems are now equipped with volume snapshot tools, however these hardware-based snap-shot technologies provide only “crash-consistent” copies of data.…

In the past few years, the speed of backup & restore has made it to most of the large enterprise CEO “to achieve” list. The problem is raising up as the amount of the data is growing exponentially, where the backup window is shrinking. Its no longer acceptable to take a database down for backup or even keep it in backup mode for few hours. The restore time is even getting more critical. Its no longer acceptable to require few hours to restore a 1TB database or an e-mail. Few hours database downtime in a financial firm can mean a loss in millions of dollars, I am not sure how would the IT department make up for that. Will they be able to get back to their desk next morning?…

Many of you who had figured out that I was away of writing on my blog for a while, I will have to tell you IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager is the reason behind it. This product which is a bit more than two weeks old, is going to replace IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services & IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for advanced Copy Services. I have been lucky to start testing the product about three weeks back even before it went GA, as we had to build a proof of concept for one of our large clients for Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for SQL on DS8000.

You might wonder what is IBM TFCM is all about. Its easier to understand the idea behind it if you have a bit of background of storage snapshotting technology.…