Hi Keith I had a similar idea a while back. In my case it was about using a single TSM infrastructure to provide backups to multiple independent customers.
My idea was to have a vmware box and a standard TSM server image which would have enough disk to store one night's backup. The next storage pool would reside on a big back-end TSM server. There would be no copy pools on the front end server, but the back end server would have its primary pool both deduplicated and backed up with the copypool data sent offsite. If there is a TSM configration manager in the mix, then adding a new customer would be as simple as cloning the standard VMware image and connecting to the config manager. With approriate firewall rules in place you might even get away with open registration. Other big pluses are that the customer level TSM servers can use a basic client licence since there is no direct tape connection, and there is only one set of offsite tapes to deal with no matter how many customers you have. The backend TSM box only has to deal with other TSM servers and so has a small database. This was never implemented due to other priorities and the need to source a box to host the front end VMs. But, I think it could work and it is similar enough to your idea that it confirms it is a good one. I'm not sure about dual copypools though. A landing pad for each VM migrating daily to a server-to-server primary pool might work better. I'd be interested to know what you finally decide. Regards Steve Steven Harris TSM Admin, Paraparaumu, New Zealand On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 13:32:24 -0600, "Huebner,Andy,FORT WORTH,IT" <andy.hueb...@alconlabs.com> wrote:
I am not sure I understand. You want to build virtual TSM servers with no storage pools to funnel the data to a physical TSM with storage pools to reduce the workload on the physical server? What work are you trying to reduce since the physical server will still have the data on its network connection and on its storage devices. Consider these random thoughts: iSCSI Library Managers are not evil K.I.S.S. Backups are for fun, restores are serious LPAR > guest Andy Huebner -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of Keith Arbogast Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2011 1:01 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: [ADSM-L] copypool-only TSM server on a VM I have been asked to evaluate the use of copypool-only TSM servers built on virtual machines. Virtual machines on ESX can't do I/O to tape devices, but the source server for a server-to-server copy pool does not need to do I/O to tape devices. It sends its files to the target TSM server which does the tape I/O. So, potentially, several TSM servers built on virtual machines could send virtual volumes to one physical TSM server target with tape I/O capability. Primary pools would be defined on the source servers, but they would be marked unavailable permanently. Each TSM server on a virtual machine would have two copy pools: one on-site and the other off-site; instead of an on-site primary pool and an off-site copy pool. The reason for doing this would be; to divide the backup load into smaller chunks across more TSM servers, to avoid buying more physical servers, and to share tape drives without using a Library Manager. A detriment of this setup would be that reclamation of the copypools would be degraded with no primary tape pools to read from. Are there other obvious or subtle problems with this idea? Or, is it brilliant?... Which copypool would restore files come from? How would that be managed? Our TSM license is based on TB in primary storage, so extra licenses are not a factor. Please, don't be shy. Thank you, Keith Arbogast Indiana University This e-mail (including any attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not an intended recipient or an authorized representative of an intended recipient, you are prohibited from using, copying or distributing the information in this e-mail or its attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies of this message and any attachments. Thank you.