Zoltan,

I did a consulting gig at a large TSM site a million years ago that
sounds similar to yours.  In their case, they had a TSM server that was
flat out 24*7 and did not have enough time to do even the simplest thing
like expire files.  My job there was to help figure out what to do.  In
working with the customer, we kept coming back to his fact that there
was not any money to upgrade, that management wouldn't understand the
request, that clients were frustrated, blah, blah, blah.  They were
contemplating a switch to another platform too, but still were unwilling
to allocate enough financial resources to do the job correctly.

I blather all of this out there to make the following point: if
backup/restore/archive/disaster recovery are of insufficient value to
the organization, no amount of technical wizardry will overcome the
problem.  It is only when we have adequate resources to purchase enough
hardware that we have a chance to succeed.

In your case, it sounds like you have a good plan.  Fight the good fight
and get enough bucks to get enough hardware to build a kick ass system.

Or don't start... 


Kelly J. Lipp
VP Manufacturing & CTO
STORServer, Inc.
485-B Elkton Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80907
719-266-8777
lipp AT storserver DOT com

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 8:19 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Recommendations for hardware replacement/upgrade

We never have enough resources.

The 4-LTO drives in one library, are shared amongst 3-TSM servers which
transfer over 2TB, nightly.  The 4th TSM server is dedicated to Domino
backups, which use it's 4-LTO and 4-3592 drives, 24x7, transferring
almost 3TB of mostly non-compressable data (I never get more than 800GB
on a
3592-2 tape) daily.

With the drives being busy almost nonstop, this leaves little time for
things like reclamation, etc.  Right now, I had to manually bring back
150-offsite LTO tapes with less than 20% utilization, since I don't have
time/drives to perform standard offsite reclamation by rebuilding them
from the primary onsite tapes.

It is a constant, hand-management juggling act, having to constantly
intercede when the regular schedules get out-of-whack due to bursts in
new data, LTO drives failing, etc.

One of the servers is going to grow by 150GB or more of new data
(radiological images), daily.

So, trying to add one more TSM server to try to share 4-6 drives, just
won't work.



"Allen S. Rout" <asr AT UFL DOT EDU>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
01/11/2007 10:04 AM
Please respond to
"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>


To
ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc

Subject
Re: [ADSM-L] Recommendations for hardware replacement/upgrade






>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:08:22 -0500, Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU
<zforray AT VCU DOT EDU> said:


> Thanks for the feedback.

> Yes, I realize you can't beat AIX for I/O bandwidth.  Unfortunately, 
> it comes down to $$$$$$ (doesn't it, always).

I think your $/performance-unit is much better on AIX than it will be in
intel-land.  I call the x86 option cheap now, pricey later.  But you've
already said that AIX isn't on the table.

> I agree it would be beneficial to break things up. However, this would

> lead to even more contention for resources (tape, tape
> libraries) than we already have.  We have enough issues juggling 4-TSM

> servers against 3-tape libraries (1-3494 2-3583).

I don't understand how you concluded this.  Whatever the count of
servers you're using, the drive use should be related to the client node
count and behavior, and should not be varying too much.  Am I missing
something?

> I hadn't really thought about running multiple TSM server instances on

> one machine.  Not sure if it is worth the effort/risk!

If you are already running multiple TSM servers, you've got the
coordination infrastructure in place already.  (or you don't in which
case God Bless You) That won't be much different if you've got 2 servers
on one box.  I'm running 11 on one box now: Having relatively small
databases makes a huge improvement in reliablity.


- Allen S. Rout