Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Submit A Question Or Topic

If anyone would like to submit a topic they would like to see covered or have a question about TSM or tape/SAN issues or strategy please e-mail me at chadsmal@us.ibm.com. With 5.3.2 out soon there will some things to cover. I am also thinking of posting an article on my LAN-Free to disk trial that was a great success. If anyone is interested in LAN-Free to disk let me know and I'll post my experience. If you would like to submit a post I am open to having guest contributors. Even though the name says TSMExpert I do not profess to know it all. Your contribution or questions help others out there.

9 comments:

  1. I'd like to see a discussion about restoring a node to different hardware. I've been working on it for a while and haven't found a way to do a clean restore.

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  2. Can you expand on that? When you say different hardware I will assume the server fried and the newer one is different or you are refreshing a server? If its data moves you need you have to use the virtualnode name option, it's the least disruptive. Can't even restore Novell data to anything but Novell so that one is out. Unix and NT are a different story so gimme a scenario and I'll be happy to oblige.

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  3. I've been trying to move a windows 2003 system to new hardware. We get vendors in sometimes to do installs, so we have no idea how to install and setup some applications. I'm trying to use TSM to move the system by doing a restore to new box; specifically an old Dell 1650 PowerEdge to a new 1850 Poweredge. Old box had three small HDs, new box has one large HD. I found I can't simply install the OS, restore, but don't overide files, restore system state, and then reboot, like for same hardware systems. I've had to install Windows to a different dir than on the original system. Then do a restore, while not overriding files, then do a system state restore. When I reboot the system will not come up, a message about WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM missing or not found. So I use the recovery console, do a FIXBOOT /REBUILD and add the fresh OS install to the Boot.ini and come up on it. The odd thing is the computer name is changed to old one and it tried to join the domain. The previous network settings are gone. Plus it has forgotten about all the hardware, it rediscovers and installs everything. Now I've got a function OS that pulls some stuff from
    c:\WINNT (old dir) and
    c:\WINDOWS(new dir)

    I've tried everything I can think of to get everything moved into one install or the other, and I can't do it. I’m trying to see if someone with more experience could help.

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  4. You are going from three seperate disks to one (i.e. C:, J:,K: to just C:)? Even if you get the system restored the pointers in the registry might not point to the appropriate data. Why consolidate to one disk? Is there any RAID or SAN based disk in the environment? I could see the system not being able to boot due to that. According to Tivoli you shoudl rebuild the OS, restore your files, then restore the system state. It looks like you missed the many disclaimers about TSM's ability to restore to different hardware. Everything I've read says multiple boots will be necessary and the use of the Win2003 disk to do any repair which is likely. You asked a tough question unfortunately there is no easy answer. Even Tivoli shies away from what you asked. I'll ask around my account and see what I can find.

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  5. I didn't miss the disclaimers; I don't like being told I can't do something. I'm going to one disk because that's what I have. I'm doing this for disaster recovery testing so I'm not taking for granted we'll be able to get in exact hardware duplicates in an acceptable time frame. Not to mention some of the systems I back up are so old we couldn't get the same hardware if we had to. This isn't necessarily a is this the best way or is it pretty, it's if something really bad happens can we run on this until we get time to get it right. It would be nice if I didn't have to plan for this, but it would be nice not to have plan for disaster recovery too. Thanks for any information you can dig up.

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  6. I've talked to our people here and we have done it before but never consolidating to one disk. When we did do a restore to new hardware the system went through multiple reboots and they had to load the RAID drivers using the windows install cd repair feature after the restore completed and the system died on reboot. It's just not recommended, but they never said you can't do it.

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  7. ISC + TSM AdminCenter vs. old WEB based TSM administration:
    I tried it on a Linux box. Brrr... Does anybody have any good experience with ISC+AC? Is it worth to develop such a big, sensitive, slow, unstable and painful... applicaton? and drop the good one???
    Why?

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  8. When the system died after a reboot were they using an alternate windows install dir than the install directory on the original system?

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  9. Does any one have the procedures for setting up a second TSM 5.2.3.3 instance on a AIX 5.3 server. Any help will be much appreciated.
    AC 11/2005

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