On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 05:30:43PM -0600, Caffey, Jeff L. wrote:
Can somebody help me...?
We are in the process of implementing TSM, an IBM Shark, and a SAN all at
the same time (I'm swamped)! We are replacing EMC's Data Manager, an EMC
Symmetrix, and Veritas' Backup Exec with one brand new TSM server running on
an IBM RS/6000 (H80, 1GB RAM, 500GB Internal SSA Disk for storage pools,
Gigabit Ethernet to LAN, Fibre Channel to SAN, 5 LTO tape drives, and as
much additional 'shark' disk as necessary) performing backups on the
following server platforms:
12 AIX (will grow to 13 by mid-March, currently backed up with EDM)
43 Windows (will grow to about 130 by mid-March, currently backed up with
Backup Exec)
While I could think of hundreds of things to ask, I'll limit my request to
these five TSM questions:
1. When TSM performs incremental backups, does it backup the ENTIRE
file (at a file level) or does it only backup the CHANGES to the file (at a
binary level)? EXAMPLE: When backing up our primary file server that
contains users' home directories with MS Exchange *.pst and *.pab files that
may be quite large, will it only backup the small changes to those large
files?
file level.
byte-level backup (adaptive subfile backup) requires a client overhead which would
not be suitable for server situation. It was designed client machines with irregular
connections (eg. laptop on a dial-up)
Get users to archive their mail reasonably frequently.
2. When backing up MS Exchange files such as *.pst and *.pab, does it
require them to be closed so that it can have access, or will it back them
up while they are opened? EXAMPLE: When (using the above example) TSM runs
it's backups, will the "Access Denied" message appear when it tries to
backup "user123.pst" because the user stayed logged in over night.
If the file locks or is being written to, it will fail (it will retry a busy file
several times). If you open the exchange client then, successfully, copy the *.pst
file, it can back up.
3. Is there a SAN agent for Windows 2000 that would allow us to backup
the above environments without impacting the network? EXAMPLE: Since the
server above is on IBM ESS disk ("Shark") attached via a Fibre Channel SAN,
can we stop using Ethernet to backup "user123.pst" and similar files?
There is supposed to be a DP module for the ESS, but I havent heard back from
Tivoli about "how it actually works" and "is it available".
http://www.tivoli.com/products/index/data_protect_ess/index.html
Another angle could be IP over FC. Someone asked that question a few days ago.
We have put in the SAN/Shark topology. IBM marketing assured us that they will
have the tools to do LAN/Server free backup. If they actually deliver will
be another story.
Cheers, Suad
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