Todd,
For the original question: up to now majority of our customers have
Storage Agent nodes and we have no problems with upgrades. Mostly these
are AIX servers (Windows ones are smaller and go over LAN) and life with
AIX is very easy. You can perform upgrade during the day without *any*
significant impact:
1. set enablelanfree=no for those nodes making hourly backups. Usually we
use dsmcad thus are not forced to restart the scheduler or touch anything
than dsm.sys
2. stop all storage agents
3. upgrade/patch the server
4. upgrade one-by-one the storage agents and re-enable lan-free (I
personally prefer to send logs and other hourly stuff to diskpool over LAN
thus impact is nearly nill)
Upgrade of Storage Agent without upgrading the device driver *does not*
require restart. Even if you need to upgrade the TSM driver it is possible
driver-upgrade to be done during the night and the storage agent upgrade
to be performed the day after.
As for the Eliza's remark - many patches, especially in server/storage
agent have to be done on both sides. Therefore both server and storage
agent must be at the same patch level (i.e. all four numbers must match).
Is is clearly indicated in many server and storage agent readmes.
For the upgrade I would recommend 4.2.1.15 (and seeing other's posts on
the list I am not alone). v5.1.1.6 was not bad and going there without
stepping any v4.2.2.x or previous 5.1.0.y/5.1.1.z versions will avoid
"system object"-problem.
Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant
P.S. I posted this three days ago but did not saw it coming through. If
some of you got it please excuse the repost.
Eliza Lau <lau AT VTCAT.CC.VT DOT EDU>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
19.02.2003 17:50
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:
Subject: Re: TSM Upgrade frequency
Todd,
>From talking to a TSM Level 2 consultant, only the first 3 numbers of a
release
have to match between the server and the storage agent. If all your
storage
agents are at 4.2.1.7, upgrading the server to 4.2.1.9 should be ok.
Eliza Lau
Virginia Tech Computing Center
>
> For you folks that patch your TSM server frequently (like the individual
> from Oxford University who upgraded from some version to 5.1.6.0 on
Feb3,
> then to 5.1.6.1 on Feb7, and now planning to upgrade to 5.1.6.2 within a
> couple weeks), how many of you have Storage Agent nodes?
> I am still on 4.2.1.7 simply because of the Storage Agent issue. We
have a
> problem with TSM server crashes that is supposed to be fixed in
4.2.1.9+,
> but I find it hard to justify upgrading to 4.2.1.9+ when I know I will
have
> to upgrade to 5.x soon after. According to the documentation I have
read,
> the TSM Server version and the Storage Agent version must be at the same
> level.
> We have several Storage Agent nodes, and all of them are considered 24x7
> servers, mission critical. It is like pulling teeth to get downtime for
> any one of them just for normal OS or Application type maint. I dread
the
> time where I have to take them all down at once. Even more so, I dread
> having to take all of them down at the same time several times a month
just
> to keep updating TSM Storage Agent versions because the TSM Server
needed a
> patch.
> How do you folks with several mission critical, 24x7 servers go about
doing
> TSM Server upgrades and TSM Storage Agent upgrades? Especially
considering
> that TSM Server outages are best done during the day when no backups are
> occurring, and TSM Client Node outages are done during the night to
reduce
> impact on the users of those Client Nodes.
>
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