Hello Allen, 

We did not use this solution. 

Our netapp sales person a little while ago proposed using the bus-tech solution 
with a netapp backend store. As Netapp sells this solution. But our MVS (z/os) 
folks did not want to look at this solution. 

len 

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Allen S. Rout
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 9:49 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Backup of MVS data, leveraging TSM. (bus-tech producs?)

Howdy, all.

We've periodically talked about MVS backups, and how they just don't
mesh well with TSM's filesystem-oriented attitude.

Well, I've stumbled on something in the process of pursuing a
tape-abatement project which shows early signs of being a nice back
door into TSM treatment of MVS backups; I wanted to wave it around
here, and get a sense of whether anyone else had experimented with
it.

There's a company called 'bus-tech' which sells a gadget that talks
ESCON or FICON out one end, and FC-AL or SCSI out the other end.  It
pretends to be a flock of 3480s and 3490s to the mainframe, and writes
the tape images onto a normal EXT3 filesystem.

Here's the good part: Installing a TSM client on the appliance box
(SUSE) is a supported config.  So if you can keep enough disk around
for the backups you want to store, you can then do an incr of them,
and treat the resulting data stream as you would any other TSM data
stream.

This could be the solution to the "Make the MVS data into a by-god
bitstream, PLEASE!" problem.

We're at the early sales stage of this investigation, so for all I
know the ground could be littered with deal-breakers.  but the sales
engineer I chatted with said they had several other installations
using TSM on the appliance.  I though there was a good chance one of
those was listening here, and might give an opinion.

Anyone?


- Allen S. Rout