Re: [ADSM-L] LAN-free storage agent backing up other clients?

On Wednesday 19 November 2008, Curtis Preston wrote:
> Stef Coene said:
> >Yes, we do [backup other clients to a LAN-free storage agent]
> >We have to backup data over a remote SAN and we don't have
> >enough licenses for each client.
>
> Meaning you don't have enough storage agent licenses, right?  So you
> install the storage agent on one client, then direct several other
> clients to back up to that storage agent using the feature I'm
> describing?
Yes.
And we also have AIX clients behind a VIO server on the remote SAN.  So they
don't have direct access to the SAN (the disks are mapped through the VIO
server) so they can not see the tape drives.

> Did I also read correctly that you CAN back up to disk if you have the
> SANergy product?  I'm not sure how much that costs, though.  I'm
> guessing it's not cheap. ;)
SANergy?  I think it is not deadth, but I never (and we are a big business
partner) found a demo or a test version of it.
I hope that they will take the vtl technology from Diligence and put it in the
TSM server.  So the TSM server can present a tape drive to the clients but
the data ends up in the disk pool.  So the clients see a tape and they can do
SAN backup.

> 1. Does this change how the resulting backups are stored in the catalog
> in any way (like they're listed as having been backed up from the
> storage agent client, instead of the "real" client)?
>
> 2. Can you recover the same way?  IOW, can the storage agent read the
> associated tapes, or must the TSM server do the restore?
No.  It is only the data path.  The SAN proxy is only a proxy.

> 3. Can you also restore from the TSM server without using the storage
> agent?
I never tried, but I'm sure it can.

> 4. Does this create any sort of relationship between the storage agent
> server and the client?  For example, NetBackup has gotten better at
> this, but you have to be careful when you decommissioned a media server,
> as there is some sort of relationship that can get a bit wonky if you
> decommission the media server in the wrong way.
No.

> 5. I read that the storage agent will default to backing up over IP if
> the SAN connection has gone away.  Is there any way to turn that off?
> IOW, tell it to fail the backup if it can't go over the SAN?
I never found such an option.


Stef