I have heard it often of TSM administrators wondering why the TSM reclamation process is slow & clumsy process. The good part most of these administrators is that they understand the importance of reclamation & how it help their backup become more efficient & save on tapes, though they still wonder why it takes too longs. I had decided to give my point of view on this.
1- One of the main reasons for the reclamation process to be slow is that you don’t have enough tape drives. If you have only one tape drive into your library then you can have a seriously slow & none efficient reclamation process, as each time you need to reclaim a tape, TSM will have to copy the full tape to the disk, then reclaim the volume on the disk to another tap.…
Each component of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager has its system & Software requirements. Below I am bringing your attention to the requirements of each component. Please visit IBM website for the latest requirements for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Components as its an always updated document.
System Requirement & Supported Platforms for IBM Tivoli TSM Server
IBM TSM Server System Requirements:
IBM Tivoli Storage manager Server requirements are specific to the operating system & architect it will run on. Below are the requirements for the most commonly used platforms.
| Requirements for: | AIX | Windows |
| Hardware | 64-bit RISC System/6000 ® or pSeries system | Intel Pentium ® processor or compatible multiprocessor based system |
| Operating System | AIX ® 5.3 or above running in a 64-bit environment | Microsoft Windows 2003 Server |
| Disk Space | 200 MB | 110 MB |
| Memory | 1 GB | 128 MB
(256 MB is preferred) |
| Client
Communication Method |
TCP/IP (version 4 or 6)
Shared Memory |
TCP/IP (version 4 or 6)
Named Pipes Shared Memory |
| Web Browser | Mozilla 1.0.2, 1.3, and 1.4
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 |
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x |
OK, OK, you had just received your IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 CDs. I can guess, ah you are asking what are you going to do with all these CDs. Guess what!! You might only need 3 of them, or might need all of them depending on the enviornment you have. IBM tend to ship you all the CDs at once, and leave it up to you to use what you have licensed. Below is the list of CDs you should recieve with your IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Package.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Server
- Operational Reporting
- Administration Center
- Linux Server
- HP-UX Server
- Solaris Server
- Windows Server
- AIX Server
IBM TSM Backup-Archive Client:
- Desktop Clients (Windows Clients)
- AIX Clients
- OS/400 API Clients
- Linux Clients
- UNIX Clients (non-AIX)
IBM Integrated Solutions Console Version 6.0.1.1 (Version 6.0.1 with fix pack 1)
- Tivoli Storage Manager Administration Center for AIX
- Tivoli Storage Manager Administration Center for Windows
- Tivoli Storage Manager Administration Center for Linux xSeries
- Tivoli Storage Manager Administration Center for Solaris.
Finally Day two is ready to be published. I know quite few readers were waiting for it. The surprise we have promised about that our tutorial from Day 3 on will include videos of the steps we used in the installation and configuration. We are sorry that the video quality is not too high & does not include sound, but that is how much efforts our team is able to handle at the moment. We are considering to release a new set of video & re-clean up the whole tutorial after finishing it. So stay tuned.
Today we will cover IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Packaging Contents & requirements to prepare you for the TSM installation in Day 3 . We will start by discussing the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Packaging Contents, as its the first thing you will see when you receive your TSM Package.…
VMware VMs image level backup using TSM was not straight forward process till TSM 5.5. Up to version 5.4, you needed to run into all kind of pre & post backup scripts to backup your virtual machines using VCB & TSM. Integrating TSM & VCB was a hassle, & most companies were running after third party solutions to intermediate the integration (ex: vRanger, ESXpress, & so on). In TSM 5.5, the situation got a lot better as IBM introduced the backup vm command which canceled the need for the nasty post & pre-script commands. Though till TSM 6.0 there was no GUI for backing up virtual machines using VCB in TSM. The good news in TSM 6.0 the integration of TSM & VCB has got to be quite easy and effective.…
Backing up virutal machines running on VMware ESX as images is a rising trend. As ESXRanger is one of the leading software in backing up ESX VMs as images, I have decided to cover the best practices for ESXRanger Quiescing & VSS setting when backing up virtual machines. There is many cautions that you need to follow specially when backing up database virtual machines as images to get consistent images.
Before reinventing the wheel I searched around to see how good is the coverage of this topic over the internet, I found the below guide written by the VirtualizationTeam.com with a great coverage of the topic. I thought it will be very useful to share it with my readers, as plenty of TSM users have purchased vRanger & integrated it with their TSM Solution, to get an easier way to backup VMs.…
IBM TSM 5.5 come with three license schema as below:
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 Basic Version requires tsmbasic.lic license file
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 Extended Edition requires tsmee.lic license file
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 Retention Edition requires dataret.lic licesne file.
Note: License can’t be mixed at the site level.…
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is a backup & archive solution, so if you are familiar with backup solutions you will discover that TSM will have to be capable of performing four main functions: backup, restore, archive, and retrive. Although these concepts seem easy to most, many new admins have a hard time distinguishing between backup & archive. As I am trying to cover every one, below you will find a brief of each as being defined by IBM Tivoli Team.
Backup: Creates a copy of a file to protect against the operational loss of destruction of that file. Customers control backups by defining the backup frequency and number of versions.
Restore: Placesbackup copies of files into a customer-designed system or workstation after the loss of a file.…
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Components is the first section of three section of the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Introduction (Day1). In this section we will cover up IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Components.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager have 9 Components. Six of these components reside on the TSM Server it self & another 3 are a part of the solution, but does not reside on the TSM Server. The first Six components in the list below are the TSM Components which reside on the TSM Server, where the last 3 components which has been colored in red are components which does not reside on the TSM Server.
TSM Components:
- Administrative Interface
- Tivoli Storage Manager Server
- Scheduler
- Tivoli Storage Manager Database
- Tivoli Storage Manager Recovery Log
- Policy-Based Management
- Storage Pools
- Tape Library
- Backup-Archive Client (BA Client)
Now you at least know the name of the TSM Server components, you start to wonder what each of these components mean.…
As its your first day in our TSM School, please choose your seat and tighten your belt and be ready. Today we will introduce you to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager & its primary functions.
TSM is the primary backup & data management solution used into the enterprise today. TSM has a tough competition in the SMB mainly due to its cost, as its an enterprise solution. In the other hand, its a clear winner when it come to the enterprise for many reasons just summarizing few of them below:
1- TSM Can easily scale up to thousands of nodes without any problem. It has been designed with enterprise scalability in mind. Most other backup solutions fail to scale up after couple of hundreds of nodes, but with TSM scalability is a major advantage.…
