On Saturday, Sep 27, 2003, at 07:25 Australia/Sydney, John Schneider
wrote:

Greetings,
   I have a question about the TSM server process.  I know it is a
complex, multi-threaded piece of software, but does it run on multiple
CPUs simultaneously?
   On a 2-CPU Windows 2000 dedicated TSM Server for example, where TSM
is the only application running, are both CPUs kept busy by TSM?  Or is
TSM only running on one, while the other sits around doing nothing but
overseeing all the other mostly idle processes.
   And is this also true of AIX?  Does a 1-way AIX TSM server run the
same as a 2-way or 4-way with the same processor speed?

   If you can give real answer (not vague guesses, please) I would
appreciate it, and I know others would as well.  I set up a lot of TSM
servers for low-end customers only backing up 10-15 servers, and
putting
in a 1-way vs 2-way server can add a few thousand bucks to the cost.
If
it really helped it would be worth it, but from what I can see in
performance monitors, it doesn't seem to be using multiple CPUs, but
that may be more from being I/O constrained than anything else.

We run TSM on two Sun servers, one running 5.7, the other 5.8, one
a dual CPU, one a quad CPU. I can say as a fact that I have seen TSM
using all four CPUs simultaneously on the quad-CPU box. This was
during a period of high activity - multiple client backups, a restore
or two, expiration and stgpool migrations. Much of what TSM does is
I/O bound, but many of the database operations can quite easily
become CPU bound. I have noticed this when generating backupsets - one
TSM server thread can hog a CPU to itself.

Since TSM relies on the underlying threading architecture of the OS in
question (libthread on Solaris ("Solaris threads"), according to ldd),
it is really up to the OS as to what gets scheduled where.

Cheers,
--
Paul Ripke
Unix/OpenVMS/TSM/DBA
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-- Douglas Adams