Since I've received no response from the list, I decided to spend a
day reading through both the TSM documentation on NDMP and the
documentation on NDMP itself. I had thought that NDMP was just a backup
protocol that TSM could support. It is not. It is a complete backup
system itself. It requires that the drives be attached (dedicated) to it
and that it write the tapes itself. This means that you need to share
the library and drives (more licenses!) It also needs to manage it's own
database of backup data. TSM would only provide a tape storagepool that
it would be unable to make a copy of for disaster recovery. TSM would
not be able to do tape reclamation on that storage pool either.
Basically, it means that NDMP is another backup system to manage, one
that does not have the features of TSM that make it most useful to us. 

As for the 3-way option that Mirapoint would like TSM to implement, it
would eliminate the need for the tape drives to be directly connected to
the Mirapoint box, It would instead push this off onto yet another box
that would be connected to the library and tape drives. Oh, joy! another
box to pay for and manage! Of course, I'm sure that they think that the
TSM box would be able to house the second NDMP host, possible, but I
wouldn't want to manage it. As for adding complete NDMP host
capabilities to TSM, well, I expect that eventually that will happen,
but not for quite a while. I would not want to use it unless TSM was
then able to manage the storagepool like it does it's own. In other
words, not unless disaster recovery and tape reclamation were
automatically part of the process. 

In short, we are going to continue using a two stage process for backing
up our Mirapoint boxes. We will use the Mirapoint backups to create
backup files on another server and then use TSM to backup those files.

If I'm wrong about any of this, I'm sure that someone will let me know. *8^)

David Jelinek 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jelinek, David G. 
> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 16:38 
> To: 'adsm-l AT vm.marist DOT edu'
> Subject: A query about NDMP support
> 
> 
> I would like to ask for some expert opinions from this group. 
> We use MiraPoint's e-mail appliance for our student e-mail. 
> We would like to back it up using ITSM. MiraPoint has said 
> that it intends to qualify with TSM. They want us to push 
> IBM/Tivoli for 3-way NDMP support in TSM. I have no idea if 
> that's a good thing or not. The reason they said they want us 
> to push for it is given in this snippet from a discussion 
> list, but it makes no sense to me at all:
> 
> >I'd again like to stress the strong suggestion that we get the
> >customers to press hard for IBM/Tivoli to support 3-way NDMP for TSM.
> >
> >This is undoubtedly the preferred method - for both 
> customers and Mirapoint.
> >The alternative, which would be very difficult for both 
> Mirapoint and the
> >customers, would be to use a direct connection to the 
> Mirapoint.  This
> >method would require us to also qualify the tape device 
> which is directly
> >connected . . . that will add much time, cost and complexity!!!!
> >
> >Please, lets make certain that we get all of these TSM 
> requests to be echoed
> >back to IBM/Tivoli!!!  We need 3-way NDMP support in TSM.
> 
> So is 3-way NDMP a good thing to push for? Do their reason(s) 
> make any sense, and are they valid? Or do they not understand 
> TSM and NDMP? 
> 
> Thanks in advance for your opinions and advice.
> 
> 
> David Jelinek 
>