Fellow *SMers:



I have completed my first installation of TSM for a public school system and
would welcome any comments or recommendations as to how things could be
improved.  Initially, I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of work
required to get this all set up and the way I bid this, was to charge the
customer ONLY for the few days I spent on site.  Since then, I've made a
considerable investment to get down the "learning curve."  I had no
assistance or training other than what was in IBM's online documentation.  I
opened two PMRs with IBM on specific issues.



Here's a description of what has been done so far:



There is a single IBM eServer x226 (MS Windows Storage Server 2003 with SP1)
with 5 ea. 250 GB SATA drives attached via SCSI controller to an IBM 3582
Tape Library.  The server is configured with (only) a 10 GB RAID system
partition and a RAID 5 virtual disk which I've partitioned into two volumes.
The tape library has two drives and 18 LTO 200/400GB tapes loaded.  TSM
5.3.2 was installed and the 5.3.2.2 fix was applied.  I've been using the
Windows management console and ISC to configure and monitor TSM.



I set up the following policy domains:



STANDARD      - the default policy domain

REMOTE_BU     - for remote clients over slower links

MS_SQL_DOMAIN - for backing up a couple servers with MS SQL databases



My storage hierarchy is as follows:



ARCHIVEPOOL     DISK    - - migrates to - >   DISKPOOL

BACKUPPOOL      DISK    - - migrates to - >   DISKPOOL

COPYPOOL      LTOCLASS1

DISKPOOL        DISK    - - migrates to - >   LTOPOOL1

LTOPOOL1      LTOCLASS1

SPACEMGPOOL     DISK



My server is using TCP/IP and listening on port 1500.  Clients can be
accessed over port 1581.



I've defined the following schedules:



POLICY DOMAIN      SCHEDULE NAME          DESCRIPTION

-------------      ----------------       ----------------------------

STANDARD           DAILY_INCR             Daily incremental backup

                   NIGHT_BU               Nightly Client Backup

                   REMOTE_FULL            Full backup from Remote site

                   WEEKLY_INCR            Weekly incremental backup



REMOTE_BU DOMAIN   AFTERHOURS_BU          Backup after hours



MS_SQL_DOMAIN      RENAISSANCE_BU         Renaissance DB Backup



There are 15 clients including Windows 2003 and Netware 6.5 servers.  Two of
the Windows servers also have MS SQL databases to back up.



Issues:

-------

One issue I'm trying to come to terms with is how to assign backups to
storage pools.  I've got most of the backups going to the DISKPOOL and
migrating to the LTOPOOL1.  Within LTOPOOL1 I have 18 volumes (tapes).



Should I divide the tape volumes into LTOPOOL1 and COPYPOOL then dedicate
individual tape volumes to each server or should I let TSM handle that?
Then check out the tapes assigned to the COPYPOOL for taking offsite on a
regular basis?



Thanks in advance,

Jay Cunningham

Netuit, Inc.

Durham, NC