Windows with primary stg on disk and offsite copy pool on tape

[joeperry72]

I am trying to figure out how to get tapes offsite and make it easy for my administrator to rotate the tapes. My setup is TSM 5.5 (on Windows 2003) with the primary stg pool being on disk. I have it backing up every night to a TS3100 tape library (one LTO-3 tape drive). From there I am not sure which commands to run to make sure that tapes are ejected so they can be taken offsite. Do I need to reclaim the copy storage pool?

I had a suggestion from a colleague to delete all volumes in the copy storage pool every day (via a script) so that whenever I backup the primary storage pool it would copy everything again, getting rid of the need for reclamation. There is only about 250G of data so this is doable.

Please let me know any ideas anyone might have to help with this. Thanks so much!

[moon-buddy]

Are you using DRM?

In real practice, the copy pools (called offsite tapes) are ejected daily for storage elsewhere (as well as your DB backup) for DR purposes.

If you are using DRM, do a "help move DRM" for details.

As for reclamation, run reclamation based on threshold - when the tape gets below a certain level. Don't go deleting the offsite pool. This is not a recommended practice.

Read further about DRM in IBM Redbooks - TSM Admin Guide.

[joeperry72]

Well the DRM part make sense for me. I have a schedule set that says:
move drm * wheret=mountable state=vault copypool=offsitecopypool (or something similar...I am doing this from memory).

My question is that because all tapes with anything on them are ejected from the library, what will happen next? When I run a backup of the primary stg pool to the copy pool is it only going to copy the changed data because it knows that the other files are on the offsite tapes? Then what happens when I run reclamation? Should I run that before or after I backup? Should I run my move drm command before either of those? I guess I am just trying to figure out the best order so that this is as effecient as possible.

Thanks again!

[moon-buddy]

I believe youy are not fully understanding how TSM works.

TSM hold an online Tape pool which is always there and never is ejected under normal circumstances. The offsite pool is a copy of the tape pool which is sent offsite for DR purposes.

Reclamation is a separate event both for the online and offsite tape pools.

Here is what typically happens:

Data is backed up and held or cached to disk. The data is then migrated from the disk to the online tape pool. The online pool is then copied to the offsite tape pool.

[joeperry72]

I think I am understanding what you are saying. I just have a few questions on the requirements of TSM I guess.

What I want is onsite storage to be all on disk (which is working fine right now). Then my tape library I want to be used only for db backups and creating tapes to go offsite. I don't want an onsite copy pool. Is it a requirement that I have an onsite copy pool that is tape if I want to have an offsite copy pool that is tape?

If the configuration I am looking for will work, what do the order for admin schedules look like for that setup?

[joeperry72]

Ok so more information that may help. I have these schedules setup:

1:00AM DBBACKUP: backup db devclass=ltoclass type=full
2:00AM MAKE-OFFSITE-COPY: backup stgpool diskpool offsitepool
7:00AM MOVE-OFFSITE: move drmedia * wherest=mo copy=offsitepool remove=bulk tostate=vault
6:00PM DEL-DBVOL: del volhist todate=today-1 type=dbb
7:00PM EXPIRE: expire inv duration=60

And of coure there is a window for the clients to backup. I am wondering what happens when I run the move drmedia command. I tested and it marks the tape offsite and moves it to the entry/exit port. That is fine and dandy. But what about the next day? Is TSM going to fully copy everything from primary storage to the copy pool again, and then send another full tape offsite....or only the files it knows are not currently offsite? If that is the case, how do I reclaim the offsite storage pool. Is this all going to work considering I only have one tape drive in the library?

What is the easiest and most efficient way to get tapes that are coming back put in the library?

Thanks!

[JeanSeb]

If i may put my 2 cents in,

If you are only running your expiration for 60 minutes, you may want to use the "skipdirs=yes" option (see "help exp inv"), and do full expiration once in a while, once again see "help exp inv".

[moon-buddy]

Ok so more information that may help. I have these schedules setup:

1:00AM DBBACKUP: backup db devclass=ltoclass type=full
2:00AM MAKE-OFFSITE-COPY: backup stgpool diskpool offsitepool
7:00AM MOVE-OFFSITE: move drmedia * wherest=mo copy=offsitepool remove=bulk tostate=vault
6:00PM DEL-DBVOL: del volhist todate=today-1 type=dbb
7:00PM EXPIRE: expire inv duration=60

Ok this looks fine except that you amy want to run expiration a little longer.

And of course there is a window for the clients to backup. I am wondering what happens when I run the move drmedia command. I tested and it marks the tape offsite and moves it to the entry/exit port. That is fine and dandy. But what about the next day? Is TSM going to fully copy everything from primary storage to the copy pool again, and then send another full tape offsite....or only the files it knows are not currently offsite?

TSM is moving the tapes to offsite for DR reasons. Should you have a disaster, TSM can recover your data via the DB backup and offsite tapes.

If that is the case, how do I reclaim the offsite storage pool. Is this all going to work considering I only have one tape drive in the library?

Reclamation is run against a threshold. See "help reclaim stgpool" for help. What happens is that the offsite tapes are not always full, and under utilized. The under utilization goes even further as you run expiration. This is where reclamation kicks in.

Now for your dilemma - you only have one tape. You cannot run reclamation without doing much work. You really need one more tape drive - two more tape drives would be better - to run reclamation automatically.

What is the easiest and most efficient way to get tapes that are coming back put in the library?

Thanks!

Reclamation will return your offsite tapes as scratch after the process completes but you cannot achieve this well without a second tape drive. The worst case without running reclamation you end up with many tapes offsite.

[javajockey]

Let me make one suggestion based on lessons I have learned over the year. DO NOT USE DEVICE CLASS DISK FOR LONG TERM STORAGE! This was a painful lesson for me to learn. If you must use disk instead of tape, Create a primary storage using Device Class FILE. This will almost certainly save you time and effort in the long run. Performance will be much better as well. Carve out enough space on your disk SAN or DAS for one night's worth of backup. Then migrate it to a permanent storage using device class FILE. Depending on your schedule run your copypool off of your backuppool or device class FILE pool. In my enviroment, I only use disk for an ACTIVEDATA pool. It works great. I still can use tape if my ACTIVEDATA pool fails. I also don't have to worry about running out of space. I can give you some pointers of the commands if you need help.