Wednesday, June 10, 2020

New Version of TSMExplorer



There is a new version of TSMExplorer available and it has added support for Spectrum Protect Plus. See can download a trial version of 5.2.3 here.  TSMExplorer has a load of features and provides a great central management console when you have multiple TSM/Spectrum Protect Servers. With the added support of managing Spectrum Protect Plus it's even easier to manage your environment.



Here is a video of an older version of TSMExplorer so you can get a feel for the product.




Here is a video of the client agent and how it works with the TSMExplorer console to allow access to the client options files and logs for easier management.


Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Finally - A Universal Backup Agent!


I was contacted by a representative of Spictera about their SPFS tool for Spectrum Protect. This product allows you to use a local mount on your Linux server as a place to save your backup or application dump that is a direct connection to the IBM Spectrum Protect backend storage. It uses Spectrum Protect API calls and allows you to implement versioning and retention policies just as you would normal file system backups or archives. This product can solve your issues with proprietary applications that IBM does not, and probably never will, support. Now you can backup your MongoDB or SAP HANA a lot easier by using the native backup process built into your application. Currently it only supports the following OS's.


Supported operating systems are:
  • CentOS 6 for x86_64
  • CentOS 7 for x86_64
  • CentOS 8 for x86_64
  • Debian 8 for x86_64
  • Debian 9 for x86_64
  • Red Hat 6 for x86_64, ppc64 be, s390x (zLinux)
  • Red Hat 7 for x86_64, ppc64 le, s390x (zLinux)
  • Red Hat 8 for x86_64, ppc64 le, s390x (zLinux)
  • SuSE 11 for x86_64, ppc64 be, s390x (zLinux)
  • SuSE 12 for x86_64, ppc64 le, s390x (zLinux)
  • SuSE 15 for x86_64, ppc64 le, s390x (zLinux)
  • Ubuntu 14.04 for x86_64, ppc64 le, s390x (zLinux)
  • Ubuntu 18.04 for x86_64, ppc64 le, s390x (zLinux)
I would assume if it support CentOS x86_64 you should have no trouble with it on Red Hat. I'll let Spictera confirm that though. I've provided a presentation on the product for your review.


Wednesday, May 13, 2020

HBA Info Script

I thought I would pass this script along for anyone needing a way to out HBA info on Linux in a nicely formatted table.

#!/bin/bash
echo "FC_HOST     |   PortID   |    WWN             | State      | Speed    "
echo "------------+------------+--------------------+------------+----------"
for hba in `ls -d /sys/class/fc_host/host*`;do
  FC_HOST=`basename $hba`
  PortID=`cat $hba/port_id`
  wwpn=`cat $hba/port_name`
  state=`cat $hba/port_state`
  speed=`cat $hba/speed`
  hba=`cat $hba/symbolic_name`
  echo "$FC_HOST| $PortID | $wwpn | $state| $speed" | awk 'BEGIN{OFS=FS="|"}{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){$i=sprintf("%-12s",$i)};print}'
done #|sort -k3n,6
echo "------------+------------+--------------------+------------+----------"


The output looks like this


FC_HOST     |   PortID   |    WWN             | State      | Speed    
------------+------------+--------------------+------------+----------
host0       | 0xffffffff | 0x20003890a540876c | Linkdown   | unknown  
host11      | 0xffffffff | 0x20003890a540876d | Linkdown   | unknown  
host12      | 0x640000   | 0x100000109b1bbe00 | Online     | 32 Gbit  
host13      | 0xffffffff | 0x20003890a5803461 | Linkdown   | 40 Gbit  
host14      | 0xffffffff | 0x20003890a5803462 | Linkdown   | 40 Gbit  
host15      | 0x640000   | 0x100000109b1bbe01 | Online     | 32 Gbit  
host16      | 0x03eac0   | 0x100000109b1b9a77 | Online     | 16 Gbit  
host17      | 0x04eac0   | 0x100000109b1b9a78 | Online     | 16 Gbit  
------------+------------+--------------------+------------+----------

If you would like more detail I added a couple more columns to show make, model, firmware, and driver version. This is a fixed width column layout and the minimum column width can be adjusted for your needs.

#!/bin/bash
echo "FC_HOST         |   PortID       |    WWN             | State          | Speed          | Make           | Model          | Firmware       | Driver"
echo "----------------+----------------+--------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+---------------"
for hba in `ls -d /sys/class/fc_host/host*`;do
  FC_HOST=`basename $hba`
  PortID=`cat $hba/port_id`
  wwpn=`cat $hba/port_name`
  state=`cat $hba/port_state`
  speed=`cat $hba/speed`
  hba=`cat $hba/symbolic_name`
  hba_make=`echo $hba | cut -f1 -d ' ' `
  hba_model=`echo $hba | cut -f2 -d ' ' `
  hba_fw=`echo $hba | cut -f3 -d ' ' `
  hba_driver=`echo $hba | cut -f4 -d ' ' `
  echo "$FC_HOST| $PortID | $wwpn | $state| $speed | $hba_make | $hba_model | $hba_fw | $hba_driver " | awk 'BEGIN{OFS=FS="|"}{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){$i=sprintf("%-16s",$i)};print}'
done #|sort -k3n,6

echo "----------------+----------------+--------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+---------------"

The output looks similar to this:



Tuesday, April 21, 2020

End of the Road?

For those of you who come here periodically and are wondering why content has been lacking, I wanted to let you all know that it is due to my current employment situation. Currently my employer is in the process of replacing Spectrum Protect throughout the company with Commvault. Once the conversion has completed I will be released and so am currently looking for new employment. Since the 8.1.8 upgrade of our servers I have been working steadily on reporting and prepping for the conversion. The initial thought was that I would stay employed and transition to learning Commvault, but that turned out to not be the case. I have enjoyed managing ADSM/TSM/Spectrum Protect environments for the last 22 years but have seen a drop off of its use as IBM has retreated from marketing their products and moved more towards other areas of the IT field. As I have looked for jobs in the Spectrum Protect realm I have noticed that they are rarer than ever, especially with the current situation the world finds itself. I plan to leave the site and up and will post anything you the readers feel will benefit the Spectrum Protect community. Feel free to send me your article for review and if I feel it fits the nature of this website it will be posted. Unfortunately, unless things change I see myself transitioning into a new role with a cloud emphasis and posts here will end unless you all take over the mantle and provide other admins with advice and examples from your own experiences. I have enjoyed posting and helping the community since founding this website and wish you all success going forward.