Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hi Wayne - and others following this thread with interest Firstly, how big is your current environment on OS/390 as far as TSM is concerned. I really do not see OS/390 scaling like AIX when it comes to TSM... I agree that most of the people running OS/390 have all the scheduling/reporting/tape handling sorted out and it works very well. OK - here comes my personal views (Based on 7+ years of running ADSM/TSM on Sun/Aix/NT/2000 and OS/390: General Performance: If you give OS/390 unlimited resources - so, in other words - no memory/cpu contention - it would perform OK. AIX on the other hand will scream if it was running on a S80 for instance. I/O performance: Escon on OS/390 limited to +- 15 Mb/sec - normally you share that with the rest of the LPAR - batch and whatever else you are running. On AIX you have FCP - a lot cheaper and faster than escon implementations on OS/390. Like mentioned already by other members - OS/390 you are limited in terms of robotics you can implement - basically a STK silo or IBM 3494. On AIX you have a very wide range of supported configs. Reporting: You can do all your reporting still from OS/390, even if you are running a TSM server on NT/AIX/Sun. We have all our reporting/problem logging for our TSM environment running from OS/390 - although the TSM servers are a mix of OS/390 and many NT TSM servers. Tape mgmt. your RMM, TLMS etc. are in anycase told that it must not manage TSM data - TSM has that built in. On AIX you just let TSM handle it. At the end of the day the only real benefit I can see on OS/390 and tape handling is if you have electronic vaulting set up - so your robotics and tape drives for your off-site storage pools are located physically off-site but genn'ed as local drives. With scripts and maybe DRM in place it should be just as easy to manage your tapes on AIX as on OS/390. Hope this helps a bit. Regards Christo TSM on S/390 works great here. We have good automation tools for message handling and staff to note messages that haven't been automated. We schedule lots of batch admin clients with the S/390 job scheduler that generate reports that are distributed thru the report distribution software. No performance problems here, except we do have to compete for tape drives... Thank you. __ "The information contained in this communication is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed and others authorised to receive it. If you are not the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or taking action in reliance of the contents of this information is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. Absa is neither liable for the proper, complete transmission of the information contained in this communication, any delay in its receipt or that the mail is virus-free."
Re: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
We're running TSM on AIX, but we also have a mainframe on-site (shares our 3494 for VTS use) that's unrelated to TSM. We're looking at hacking a solution together. The general plan is that I'll create a pick list file and hand it off to one of our mainframe guys. He's going to find a way to hook that data into TMS on the mainframe. Until we get that working, we'll stick to our old method. Each volume that might potentially get sent offsite gets it's own dedicated rack slot in the vault. The pick list gets e-mailed to the staff at the vault site and they can easily pull or place tapes. Wastes a lot more space, but it's easy enough to manage. =Dave David E Ehresman wrote: > > Thanks for the reference to AutoVault. I checked with them and they do > not do slot management at this time. > > Is anyone doing vault **slot** management on Aix? -- Hello World.David Bronder - Systems Admin Segmentation Fault ITS-SPA, Univ. of Iowa Core dumped, disk trashed, quota filled, soda warm. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Bill, Thanks for the reference to AutoVault. I checked with them and they do not do slot management at this time. Is anyone doing vault **slot** management on Aix? David >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/20/02 10:37AM >>> David, As for the vaulting, take a look at AutoVault from www.coderelief.com. For the checkin, we wrote a small PERL script that issues the checkin command (we actually have it defined as a server script and the PERL just does a RUN CHECKIN), then waits a couple seconds and issues a QUERY REQUEST, parses out the reply number and issues the REPLY . You could probably do the same thing with a shell script. Makes it automated. We even schedule it. The client schedule runs the PERL script (action=command) which turns around and does the checkin. We have this running in several sites with different SCSI type libraries. Plus PERL is free! Bill Boyer DSS, Inc. -Original Message- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David E Ehresman Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hi, I have been following this thread with much interest. We are in the scenario of running both TSM AIX and OS390 servers. We are looking currently at standardising on one or the other. Both have their plus ponts. OS390 is very good on tape management (dfrmm) and via netview, rexx and infoman problem alerting. For example we pick up on backup failure messages and also backups that have not started within an hour of their scheduled start. However it does have two drawbacks as far as I am concerned. It is a fairly limited market for TSM so it is not going to get top resource for development As already identified it will normally run on an lpar with a mixed workload and may accordingly suffer from resource constraints. AIX is not my area, but in broad terms I believe it is not so good on the tape management front The AIX guys use an external scheduler ( MAESTRO) and scripting to achieve a similar level of alerting to backup failures. The big advantage that I think they have is that they run TSM (actually ADSM, in their case) on dedicated boxes. What I would reaaly love to know is if there is anyone out there running TSM on OS390 on a dedicated lpar, and if so whether they are very happy /happy/ or just ok with the performance . Thanks, John "Seay, Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 03/21/2002 04:34:33 AM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc:(bcc: John Naylor/HAV/SSE) Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 OK guys, you are both right. Doug your frame of reference is from a S/390 point of view as a general computing platform. Clearly S/390 is a better platform for all the reasons you are talking about. Daniel is speaking purely from a TSM point of view, I think. I love these kind of discussions. -Original Message- From: Doug Fuerst [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 4:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders of magnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O being performed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier to administer, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBM either. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, and adjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatched properly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersized processor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence, but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for this environment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not. UNIX may be better at interactive applications, but I don't think it is better at I/O, transaction, or batch processing. And a 390 is infinitely more scaleable, and now can run Linux anyway. And one 390 box can replace a whole bunch of small UNIX servers. Just my $.02 Doug At 02:18 PM 3/20/2002 +0100, you wrote: >Hi > >As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive >effects such as: > >- Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor >amount of memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This >is not a problem when running a UNIX box. > >- The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 >system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM >had existed on both UNIX and S/390. > >- Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have >to have a IBM representative doing all the work. > >- S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for >disk/tape/network I/O. > >Best Regards > >Daniel Sparrman snip>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.. Doug Fuerst Consultant BK Associates Brooklyn, NY (718) 921-2620 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** The information in this E-Mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It may not represent the views of Scottish and Southern Energy plc. It is intended solely for the addressees. Access to this E-Mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Any unauthorised recipient should advise the sender immediately of the error in transmission. Scottish Hydro-Electric, Southern Electric, SWALEC and S+S are trading names of the Scottish and Southern Energy Group. **
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hi, we now have much better performance for everything (expirations, reclamations, migrations...) and also for backups (more LAN adapters). Before, OS 390 2.4, 120 mips, 2 processors, 1 x CIP card (max 1 x 3 MB/s) after: pseries 6M1 with 4 GB memory and 4 processors, 4 X 100mbs adapters (max 4 x 100 mbs). Regards, René LAMBELET NESTEC SA GLOBE - Global Business Excellence Central Support Center Av. Nestlé 55 CH-1800 Vevey (Switzerland) tél +41 (0)21 924 35 43 fax +41 (0)21 924 12 69 room K4-108 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This message is intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. > -Original Message- > From: Joni Moyer [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 2:13 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 > > Hello again! > > I was just wondering if anyone has moved from an OS/390 platform to an AIX > or SUN and if so, what are the pros/cons of such a move? Thanks!!! > > Joni
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
TSM on AIX(S70, H80) will be faster than OS/390. It is easy to write scripts(or ask the ADSM-List) to manage your media, manage your tape-robot(3494), manage the Tsm-Server and so on. It is really very easy and you can get a lot of scripts from this List. Bert Moonen Storage Management ABP Heerlen Netherlands. -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Schaub Joachim Paul ABX-PROD-ZH [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Verzonden: donderdag 21 maart 2002 7:58 Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Onderwerp: AW: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 Your benefit is to carry arround physical tapes in the landscape? What has this with the platform to do? I now also OS/390 guys doing that. regards Joachim -Ursprungliche Nachricht- Von: Seay, Paul [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Gesendet: Donnerstag, 21. Marz 2002 06:04 An: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Betreff: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 David, I have DRM and it really helps but even then I wrote a lot of stuff for the offsite movement. Mainly because I needed something that looked more like a mainframe. TSM is designed for open slot vault management. That is a bear especially when you consider the 3590K media gets destroyed if it is dropped at all. So, we put our tapes in sealed cases and do move data commands to resend the data offsite the week before the tapes are coming back containing that data. Yes, it takes a lot of hardware to do that, but it is definitely worth it to know your tapes have not been monkeyed around with. -Original Message- From: David E Ehresman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville
AW: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Your benefit is to carry arround physical tapes in the landscape? What has this with the platform to do? I now also OS/390 guys doing that. regards Joachim -Ursprungliche Nachricht- Von: Seay, Paul [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Gesendet: Donnerstag, 21. Marz 2002 06:04 An: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Betreff: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 David, I have DRM and it really helps but even then I wrote a lot of stuff for the offsite movement. Mainly because I needed something that looked more like a mainframe. TSM is designed for open slot vault management. That is a bear especially when you consider the 3590K media gets destroyed if it is dropped at all. So, we put our tapes in sealed cases and do move data commands to resend the data offsite the week before the tapes are coming back containing that data. Yes, it takes a lot of hardware to do that, but it is definitely worth it to know your tapes have not been monkeyed around with. -Original Message- From: David E Ehresman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hi I'm not talking about overall performance measures, just about which box to run TSM on. If you do a general performance measurment, of course the S/390 will win. However, normally a S/390 box don't only run ADSM/TSM. It probably runs applications, DB/2 and other business critical applications. Therefore, as a storage administrator, when trying to get more power from S/390 in form of processors, memory, disk, TSM will always have a very low priority. Also, this request is normally something that has to go way up in the organisation for authorization. Doing a processor upgrade on a S/390 will cost more than buying a UNIX box in the size of a 660. If you're afraid of performance on the UNIX box, you can go all the way up to using 680:s or 690:s. I dont know any installation today requiring this much power, but it is possible. And, let's take a look at how S/390:s disk subsystems are configured. The ESS contains two UNIX boxes. Why not running Linux here? Probably because of the outstanding disk I/O performance from the UNIX boxes. Generally, the S/390 will outperform a UNIX box, especially when running transaction intensive applications such as DB/2. However, then running disk I/O intensive applications, UNIX will outperform the S/390 almost every time. But it still all about priority on the S/390... Best Regards Daniel Sparrman---Daniel SparrmanExist i Stockholm ABBergkällavägen 31D192 79 SOLLENTUNAVäxel: 08 - 754 98 00Mobil: 070 - 399 27 51-"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: -To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]From: Doug Fuerst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Date: 03/20/2002 10:11PMSubject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders ofmagnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O beingperformed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier toadminister, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBMeither. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, andadjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatchedproperly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersizedprocessor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence,but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for thisenvironment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not.UNIX may be better at interactive applications, but I don't think it isbetter at I/O, transaction, or batch processing. And a 390 is infinitelymore scaleable, and now can run Linux anyway. And one 390 box can replace awhole bunch of small UNIX servers.Just my $.02DougAt 02:18 PM 3/20/2002 +0100, you wrote:>Hi>>As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive effects>such as:>>- Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor amount of>memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This is not a>problem when running a UNIX box.>>- The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390>system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM had>existed on both UNIX and S/390.>>- Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have to>have a IBM representative doing all the work.>>- S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for>disk/tape/network I/O.>>Best Regards>>Daniel Sparrmansnip>..Doug FuerstConsultantBK AssociatesBrooklyn, NY(718) 921-2620[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
OK guys, you are both right. Doug your frame of reference is from a S/390 point of view as a general computing platform. Clearly S/390 is a better platform for all the reasons you are talking about. Daniel is speaking purely from a TSM point of view, I think. I love these kind of discussions. -Original Message- From: Doug Fuerst [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 4:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders of magnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O being performed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier to administer, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBM either. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, and adjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatched properly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersized processor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence, but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for this environment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not. UNIX may be better at interactive applications, but I don't think it is better at I/O, transaction, or batch processing. And a 390 is infinitely more scaleable, and now can run Linux anyway. And one 390 box can replace a whole bunch of small UNIX servers. Just my $.02 Doug At 02:18 PM 3/20/2002 +0100, you wrote: >Hi > >As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive >effects such as: > >- Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor >amount of memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This >is not a problem when running a UNIX box. > >- The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 >system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM >had existed on both UNIX and S/390. > >- Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have >to have a IBM representative doing all the work. > >- S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for >disk/tape/network I/O. > >Best Regards > >Daniel Sparrman snip>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.. Doug Fuerst Consultant BK Associates Brooklyn, NY (718) 921-2620 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
You can get the hardware and software for a P660-6H1 loaded with cards for much less than $100K including 4-450Mhz. This includes no disk. The point here is run your TSM environment on the right platform for your environment. Too often, open systems is the bastard child in mainframe shops and they will limit what the resources are that will be used for it. I saw it in our environment 5 years ago. If we had put TSM on an AIX machine then we would have never gone the Veritas route and then converted to TSM. The issue is the open systems environment doing enterprise computing needs an equivalent enterprise backup solution. Data relationships in open systems are 10 times that required for a mainframe. Reliable tape drives are expensive. Why buy more when I can steal some of the mainframe stuff and take care of the problem. Then grow up an open systems environment to 40TB. You are never going to move that trough an IP pipe to the mainframe. I am an old mainframer as well. TSM runs really well on UNIX and W2K. In fact, if you do not blow out the IO Bus on W2K it runs as fast or faster on W2K than it does on AIX because TSM does 256KB raw IO on W2K, something that cannot be done with JFS on AIX. The place where TSM shines on the mainframe is lite-weight clients attached to a mainframe. There is little recurring data updates, just the onetime load down. -Original Message- From: Alex Paschal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 9:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I have to agree with Doug in that the mainframe can push lots of bits. However, in the mainframe environment, I've always experienced difficulty getting resources allocated to TSM. When I had TSM on the mainframe, I couldn't get more CPU even for a critical fileserver restore. I had to go to senior management to get more CPU _temporarily_ so I could try to repair lovebug virus damage. Until I did that, the restore crawled. Out of curiosity, if you have an undersized processor, how much would it cost to upgrade the processor as opposed to buying an AIX box to run TSM? I don't really know how much 390 processor upgrades cost, but I'm under the impression that a forklift upgrade costs 3-4 million dollars, a "physically add processors" upgrade costs a whole lot, possibly several hundred thousand, and a "license unused existing processors" upgrade still probably costs more than an AIX box with library. Personally, I don't believe most mainframe shops would be willing to upgrade their mainframe just for "a backup application to back up open systems." As far as badly tuned systems, how many shops are going to admit their 390 system is mistuned and correct it? When working with just about anybody, and mainframers are no exception, and heck, neither am I, they know what's best and getting them to admit the errors of their ways is difficult. Wouldn't it still be easier to purchase an AIX box for your backup system? Also, how about the cost of process reengineering, tuning, education, or lost man hours to tune the system? The truth is, in the mainframe world, as long as TSM's not making money and it doesn't have a mandate from God, it's the red headed step child. The mainframe already has it's own backup products, so TSM is viewed as "that thing that backs up open systems boxes." They have no reason to bump TSM's resource usage, and definitely no reason to spend lots of money to accomodate TSM performance requirements. Of course, I'm sure there are exceptions, but _ALL_ of the TSM people I've talked to who had experience with TSM on the mainframe have said their TSM implementation improved in performance immensely when migrating from 390. My opinion is it's due to resource constraints. Alex Paschal Storage Administrator Freightliner, LLC (503) 745-6850 phone/vmail -Original Message- From: Doug Fuerst [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 1:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders of magnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O being performed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier to administer, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBM either. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, and adjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatched properly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersized processor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence, but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for this environment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not. UNIX may be better at interactive applications,
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
David, I have DRM and it really helps but even then I wrote a lot of stuff for the offsite movement. Mainly because I needed something that looked more like a mainframe. TSM is designed for open slot vault management. That is a bear especially when you consider the 3590K media gets destroyed if it is dropped at all. So, we put our tapes in sealed cases and do move data commands to resend the data offsite the week before the tapes are coming back containing that data. Yes, it takes a lot of hardware to do that, but it is definitely worth it to know your tapes have not been monkeyed around with. -Original Message- From: David E Ehresman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
I have to agree with Doug in that the mainframe can push lots of bits. However, in the mainframe environment, I've always experienced difficulty getting resources allocated to TSM. When I had TSM on the mainframe, I couldn't get more CPU even for a critical fileserver restore. I had to go to senior management to get more CPU _temporarily_ so I could try to repair lovebug virus damage. Until I did that, the restore crawled. Out of curiosity, if you have an undersized processor, how much would it cost to upgrade the processor as opposed to buying an AIX box to run TSM? I don't really know how much 390 processor upgrades cost, but I'm under the impression that a forklift upgrade costs 3-4 million dollars, a "physically add processors" upgrade costs a whole lot, possibly several hundred thousand, and a "license unused existing processors" upgrade still probably costs more than an AIX box with library. Personally, I don't believe most mainframe shops would be willing to upgrade their mainframe just for "a backup application to back up open systems." As far as badly tuned systems, how many shops are going to admit their 390 system is mistuned and correct it? When working with just about anybody, and mainframers are no exception, and heck, neither am I, they know what's best and getting them to admit the errors of their ways is difficult. Wouldn't it still be easier to purchase an AIX box for your backup system? Also, how about the cost of process reengineering, tuning, education, or lost man hours to tune the system? The truth is, in the mainframe world, as long as TSM's not making money and it doesn't have a mandate from God, it's the red headed step child. The mainframe already has it's own backup products, so TSM is viewed as "that thing that backs up open systems boxes." They have no reason to bump TSM's resource usage, and definitely no reason to spend lots of money to accomodate TSM performance requirements. Of course, I'm sure there are exceptions, but _ALL_ of the TSM people I've talked to who had experience with TSM on the mainframe have said their TSM implementation improved in performance immensely when migrating from 390. My opinion is it's due to resource constraints. Alex Paschal Storage Administrator Freightliner, LLC (503) 745-6850 phone/vmail -Original Message- From: Doug Fuerst [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 1:12 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders of magnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O being performed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier to administer, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBM either. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, and adjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatched properly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersized processor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence, but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for this environment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not. UNIX may be better at interactive applications, but I don't think it is better at I/O, transaction, or batch processing. And a 390 is infinitely more scaleable, and now can run Linux anyway. And one 390 box can replace a whole bunch of small UNIX servers. Just my $.02 Doug At 02:18 PM 3/20/2002 +0100, you wrote: >Hi > >As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive effects >such as: > >- Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor amount of >memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This is not a >problem when running a UNIX box. > >- The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 >system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM had >existed on both UNIX and S/390. > >- Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have to >have a IBM representative doing all the work. > >- S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for >disk/tape/network I/O. > >Best Regards > >Daniel Sparrman snip>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.. Doug Fuerst Consultant BK Associates Brooklyn, NY (718) 921-2620 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
I don't believe you are correct. 390 I/O rates are generally orders of magnitude larger than UNIX as there is simply much more I/O being performed. Personally, having experience on both, I find 390 much easier to administer, and the security is much more robust. And I don't work for IBM either. 390 processor utilization is a product of the workload, and adjustable via tuning. If your ADSM environment was not being dispatched properly, then either you had a mistuned 390 system or an undersized processor, or both. 390 is indeed a transaction processor par excellence, but is no slouch in the I/O area, but it is indeed "optimized" for this environment, as DB2 and CICS would not transact very well if it was not. UNIX may be better at interactive applications, but I don't think it is better at I/O, transaction, or batch processing. And a 390 is infinitely more scaleable, and now can run Linux anyway. And one 390 box can replace a whole bunch of small UNIX servers. Just my $.02 Doug At 02:18 PM 3/20/2002 +0100, you wrote: >Hi > >As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive effects >such as: > >- Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor amount of >memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This is not a >problem when running a UNIX box. > >- The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 >system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM had >existed on both UNIX and S/390. > >- Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have to >have a IBM representative doing all the work. > >- S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for >disk/tape/network I/O. > >Best Regards > >Daniel Sparrman snip>.. Doug Fuerst Consultant BK Associates Brooklyn, NY (718) 921-2620 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
David, As for the vaulting, take a look at AutoVault from www.coderelief.com. For the checkin, we wrote a small PERL script that issues the checkin command (we actually have it defined as a server script and the PERL just does a RUN CHECKIN), then waits a couple seconds and issues a QUERY REQUEST, parses out the reply number and issues the REPLY . You could probably do the same thing with a shell script. Makes it automated. We even schedule it. The client schedule runs the PERL script (action=command) which turns around and does the checkin. We have this running in several sites with different SCSI type libraries. Plus PERL is free! Bill Boyer DSS, Inc. -Original Message- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of David E Ehresman Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
TSM on S/390 works great here. We have good automation tools for message handling and staff to note messages that haven't been automated. We schedule lots of batch admin clients with the S/390 job scheduler that generate reports that are distributed thru the report distribution software. No performance problems here, except we do have to compete for tape drives... -Original Message- From: David E Ehresman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville This message and any included attachments are from NOVANT HEALTH INC. and are intended only for the addressee(s). The information contained herein may include trade secrets or privileged or otherwise confidential information. Unauthorized review, forwarding, printing, copying, distributing, or using such information is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you received this message in error, or have reason to believe you are not authorized to receive it, please promptly delete this message and notify the sender by e-mail. Thank you.
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
I've not done the move yet but expect to in the next 6 months. The con I expect has to do with media movement to and from our offsite vault. On OS390 we have a vault management system that tells the ops what tapes to send offsite, tells the courier which slots to put them in, which slots to pull and bring back. On AIX, we don't have such a system. I'm also implementing a small TSM system on a small AIX network with a LTO tape library. What I notice there so far is that the 3584 takes more operator intervention then does the 3494. TSM on AIX requires me to reply to messages to tell the 3584 to look for carts in the i/o station; the 3494 with TSM on OS390 just detects that it has carts in the i/o station and files them. David Ehresman University of Louisville
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
How 'bout... 1. Disk is cheaper. SCSI or even SSA beats mainframe DASD prices. 2. More supported tape hardware. On a mainframe you a limited to the devices that OS/390 supports, not what TSM supports. Bill Boyer DSS, Inc. -Original Message- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Daniel Sparrman Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 8:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 Hi As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive effects such as: - Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor amount of memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This is not a problem when running a UNIX box. - The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM had existed on both UNIX and S/390. - Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have to have a IBM representative doing all the work. - S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for disk/tape/network I/O. Best Regards Daniel Sparrman --- Daniel Sparrman Exist i Stockholm AB Bergkdllavdgen 31D 192 79 SOLLENTUNA Vdxel: 08 - 754 98 00 Mobil: 070 - 399 27 51 Joni Moyer cc: Sent by: "ADSM: Subject: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] .EDU> 2002-03-20 14:12 Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" Hello again! I was just wondering if anyone has moved from an OS/390 platform to an AIX or SUN and if so, what are the pros/cons of such a move? Thanks!!! Joni =
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hi, We have moved from os/390 to AIX and for us it has been a very good experience! only pro's. OS/390 was used for much more then only TSM so we had all kinds of resource problems. CPU especially and also tape units. We had one LPAR (of eight LPARS) with two TSM servers and around 400 clients backing up, so for the housekeeping of the servers did not have enough units. We now have two NSM's with a LTO library dedicated for the backups and restores and that is running without problems. regards, finn leijnse -Original Message- From: Joni Moyer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 20 March 2002 14:13 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 Hello again! I was just wondering if anyone has moved from an OS/390 platform to an AIX or SUN and if so, what are the pros/cons of such a move? Thanks!!! Joni
Re: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hi As far as I can see, moving do a UNIX platform only has positive effects such as: - Higher throughput. Normally, the S/390 guys only allows a minor amount of memory and processor utilization to be used by ADSM/TSM. This is not a problem when running a UNIX box. - The UNIX boxes normally have higher disk and tape I/O than a S/390 system. Dont ask me why, but I have seen this in environments where TSM had existed on both UNIX and S/390. - Administration of a UNIX box is normally easier, and you don't have to have a IBM representative doing all the work. - S/390 is optimized for transactions, UNIX is optimized for disk/tape/network I/O. Best Regards Daniel Sparrman --- Daniel Sparrman Exist i Stockholm AB Bergkällavägen 31D 192 79 SOLLENTUNA Växel: 08 - 754 98 00 Mobil: 070 - 399 27 51 Joni Moyer cc: Sent by: "ADSM: Subject: Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390 Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] .EDU> 2002-03-20 14:12 Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" Hello again! I was just wondering if anyone has moved from an OS/390 platform to an AIX or SUN and if so, what are the pros/cons of such a move? Thanks!!! Joni
Benefits of moving to platform other than OS/390
Hello again! I was just wondering if anyone has moved from an OS/390 platform to an AIX or SUN and if so, what are the pros/cons of such a move? Thanks!!! Joni
