-----Paul Zarnowski wrote: -----

>We are contemplating a massive Active Domain reorganization which
>would involve renaming hundreds of Windows machines that we backup
>into TSM.  We forsee a few problems with this, and I am looking to
>see if any other TSM sites have faced a similar problem and what they
>did to address it.
>
>The problems:
>1. Renaming a Windows system will result in TSM making a fresh
>backups for the volumes on that system (because the system name is
>part of the filespace name).  Renaming the filespace on the TSM
>server will address this, but timing is a problem.  If you rename the
>filespace a day early or a day late, you will still end up with extra
>backups.
>
>2. TSM likes to replace DOMAIN C: statements with DOMAIN
>\\systemname\C$.  If the systemname changes, then the TSM backup will
>fail, because it won't be able to find the old systemname (unless and
>until the DOMAIN statement is updated).  Again, with so many
>machines, updating all those DSM.OPT files will be problematic.
>
>3. If we have a large number of unintended extra backups, TSM server
>resources (database size and stgpool capacity) will be stretched.

Do you use the 'nodename' option or let the clients default to using
the machine name as the node name? If the machine name is used as the
node name, you many not need to worry about extra backups because the
'rename filespace' operations were mistimed; the backups will not run
at all until the appropriate 'rename node' operation is also done.
On the other hand, our experience indicates that a node name change
invalidates the TSM password saved on the client system. We think this
happens because the process the client uses to retrieve saved passwords
links each password to a specific node name.

How do you start client backups? We use the client scheduler service
without the client acceptor. The service seems to remember the node
name in effect when the service was created, even in the absence of
a 'nodename' option in dsm.opt. I don't know whether there is a way
to change the node name the service uses; we advise client system
administrators to remove the service and create a new one when a
Windows system is renamed.

Could you address problem 2 by using a client option set with
'force=yes' to force selected clients to used 'domain c:' rather
than whatever is specified in dsm.opt?