Friday, May 31, 2013

TSM 7

I recently attended a technical briefing from IBM of various storage related topics which included TSM. While they did have an NDA I can say that some of the items we discussed showed promise. I'll be able to discuss more after IBM Pulse this month, but what I can say is that the new Admin Center is pretty slick. It has some nice features and will finally make up for the folly that was the ISC. IBM stressed that they are listening to users and taking their requests and suggestions to try and develop a tool everyone will find useful. That was surprising news seeing as how the majority of people complained about the ISC and it took 7+ years to finally get a replacement. I will say this in defense of the TSM developers, a lot of the ISC push came from above and they were somewhat forced into that fiasco. TSM 7 DB will scale larger and handle more objects and they are really ramping up the capabilities of the client deployment module. More info to come in the next couple weeks.

One item that did come up was the issue of Export and Backup Set tapes being unencrypted from TSM due to the key issue. What I suggested was that they allow TSM servers to backup each others keys and also utilize them so Exports and Backup-Sets could be encrypted, but still shared between TSM servers. Hope they find some way to add that capability.

We did have a Protectier review and it has a lot of promise. I know I have been a Data Domain fanboy for some time. While I didn't see anything that integrated Protectier DeDupe with TSM directly it did show some nice growth capabilities. I'm excited to see how well it works, but I'm fighting a study that shows tape still is the more cost effective backup solution.

I'll post more once PULSE is complete (mid-June) so stay tuned!

9 comments:

  1. The TSM operations center is being rolled in phases which is something to keep in mind. Phase 1 is monitoring, phase 2 is managing, and phase 3 is automation. There should be a public release of Op center right around the corner, however it will only be a nice dashboard of what your environment is doing... once they get up to snuff for the management section, I believe the user un-friendlyness of TSM may be in the past.

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  2. I gave up on any TSM front-end since they got rid of the 3.7 Web interface. It wasn't the prettiest thing in the world, but it worked like a charm and didn't have much overhead compared to what came after it.

    Looking forward to giving the new and improved OC a go once its released. Thanks for giving us a heads up!

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  3. The new OC does have an admin command line, whether that is in the initial release I cannot say, but I do know (as Anonymous stated) it should allow administration through the interface eventually.

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  4. CLI with the opacity will be in R1...

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  5. Hi, does anyone know when TSM 7 will be released?

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  6. I have to say IBM really pushed us Admin's to the command line with the ISC fiasco. They are pushing us to use this new info center and I told them, I doubt I would ever use it. At this point, 12 years of command line with TSM, why go back!!

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  7. Hey Chad, you planning on going to Pulse this year? (2014) As another TSM friend in the Valley, we should meet up, share notes. I'll be there Sun, leaving on Thursday with some of my Fortune 50 friends. Let me know. Thanks, "Captain Kirk" :) (I have to post anonymous, but you should figure it out from my "clues")

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  8. if anybody has TSM 7.1 Certification dumps, please mail me on prasanna13th@gmail.com

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