Suad, Have you considered a strategy where you give the desktops access to network drives on a "few" servers that would be backed up incrementally? Trying to back up hundreds of desktops in a small window is a bunch more resource intensive from the TSM servers standpoint than backing up a few servers.
George Lesho Storage/System Admin AFC Enterprises Suad Musovich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>@VM.MARIST.EDU> on 10/30/2001 07:33:17 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: (bcc: George Lesho/Partners/AFC) Fax to: Subject: Server->Server Virtual Volumes (philosophical) Sorry, this got a bit long winded.. Our monolith TSM installation is suffering from client overload, specifically hundreds of desktops queueing to be backed up every morning (we only give a 4 hour window to desktops after servers have finished). Several times this month some glitches with our tape library(plus performance issues) have resulted in the disk stg pools filling up and sessions start queuing directly to tape. When this happens around the time the of the desktop backup window, we end up with dozens of media waits and the dreaded MAXSESSIONS gets reached (MAXSCHEDSESSIONS was set to 30%) Of all the options I considered, farming off the bulk of the desktops to another TSM server and using the "Server-to-Server" Virtual Volumes seems to be the most attractive. (Management have declined my BOFH proposals; desktops give us Brownie points and have been implemented since the year dot). I would appreciate any comments as I think this implementation may have been meant more for fringe deployments than dealing with rats'n'mice. The desktops (up to 300 of them) are only backing up the documents/data directories with an estimated average occupancy of 1GB and nightly backup about 30% of that (think it's more the System Object than data). They are also, mainly, in logical proximity to a sector switch, where the 2nd TSM server will be located. Info/questions: * The server we are looking at will be a dual CPU Windoze box (Linux server, where are you?), 2 NICs, local tape unit and have around 100GB of backuppool. * We can give them a full 12+ hour backup window and control the migration times to the virtual volumes (migrating the backuppool at apropriate times). * I don't think the database will get bigger than 20GB. * Total Occupancy should be somewhere between 400 and 600GB * I'm not sure how big the virtual volumes should be (600MB seems a good size for streaming off LTO tapes through 155ATM = allowing ~60seconds per volume). The main TSM server is RS6K-F80/AIX running TSM4.2.0 connecting to a 3584/LTO and an ESS via FC, I've set up a LANE ATM connection to the above sector switch reducing routing overheads for the back-end/private traffic. Does it sound Kosher?? Thanks, Suad -- Suad Musovich ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Unix Support, ITSS Operations University of Auckland