Monday, February 27, 2006

NIM vs. SysBack for DRP

We recently performed a DR test and one business group decided to use a NIM server to rebuild their systems for the test. This meant taking the local NIM server and having to restore it then restore the individual clients, meanwhile us TSM admins sat around twiddling our thumbs waiting for them to finish (for some reason the system images and NIM are handle by the System Administrators group and not the Backup/Recovery group). I would have preferred SysBacks (since we are an AIX shop), but the SA had this brilliant idea to use NIM. This added another layer of complexity and actually due to disk issues it took forever to get the NIM server running. I would like feedback on what others have done for their DR tests, and if anyone has experience with the TSM integrated  SysBack feature I would love to hear how it works for you.

FYI On TSMExpert Posts

For those not familiar with Blogger or blogging in general, I can ramble on and on and the articles can be lengthy. Because of my love of babble, reading TSMExpert can become troublesome since one post can take up so much page space. You will notice that some articles are incomplete, as I have posted a short portion that you can begin reading and decide if you want to continue. All articles have the Read Full Post link at the bottom that will load the complete article for viewing.

HSM For Windows Admin Guide

I have had some requests for more information on HSM for Windows. So after looking around the new IBM/Tivoli Document Repository I found the HSM for Windows Administrators Guide. It does state that cluster environments have been tested and are supported in 2000 and 2003. I have provided the link to the PDF document here and you can either right click and save it or open it in Adobe and save it. I am currently looking at areas I can use HSM as it is finding more of a demand in the Windows world.

Friday, February 17, 2006

TSM LTO-3 Performance Settings

I just got this info from our architect who attended an IBM tape seminar. It was stated during the seminar that to get peak performance out of LTO-3 in TSM you need to set the following parameters:

These apply to TSM 5.3

  • TXNBytelimit       2GB

  • TXNGroupmax     65000

  • MOVESizethres    2GB

  • MOVEBatchsize   1000

I have heard of some issues with using the full 65000 on the TXNGroupmax setting, but if you want best performance these settings need to be used.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Setting Up A Dedicated Library Manager Instance

I was recently asked to post a thorough document on moving the library management functions for a shared library to a dedicated TSM instance. For the person who asked, I am currently gathering the info and will try and post it by this weekend. I know it can be of great help for many out there so just know its in the works.