[Veritas-bu] Veritas Netbackup vs. Tivoli Storage Manager

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 18:13:42 -0400, Len Boyle wrote
> Hello Michael
> 
> Some of your points against TSM are a little off: 
> Both products have stong and weak points and both products are 
> getting better. But both have room for growth. With both the 
> mailings list are a required must read to the best job.
> 
> 1) It is hard to do a restore from the server with TSM, but you can 
> define a scheduled tasked to do a restore. But the product is set up 
> more in mind with the restore being done from the client end of 
> things, This can be via a web interface to the client.  On unix is 
> set up so that one can restore one's own files without being root. 
> Redirected restores are easier from the client end with TSM, harder 
> with netbackup without the need to be root on the server.
In Netbackup you will just on the server specify a different destination 
client.

> 
> 2) Yes there can only be one schedule session running on a TSM 
> client name at a time. Of course this does not mean that you can not 
> have multiple scheduled events per client just that only one can run 
> at a time.   But that session can be multi-threaded, so you can do 
> multiple filespaces at once. Like netbackup sometimes the product 
> takes some work, to work around it's basics. On the adsm-l mailing 
> list some folks have reported that one way to work around this is to 
> have two or more node names pointing to the same client, each with 
> it's  schedule. Like stories that I have heard of netbackup folks 
> creating multiple jobs for a very large filespaces.
Just this weekend I have had lot calls on my on call duty, because one 
incremental backup was hung, all the sap archives failed. In NetBackup only 
the incremental would failed.

> 
> 3) I have found that our TSM restores  start faster then our netback 
> restores. They used to be very slow in the old days when they would 
> send all the restore info down to the client which would have to 
> sort the data by media and then request the pieces and parts. Now 
> they do the selection from the server and start moving the process 
> before it is all finished. Also most TSM sites backup to disk and 
> then move the data to tape. So the tapes are not required for the 
> backup. So they are available for restores. With netbackup a restore 
> has to wait until the tape drive frees up. Which we have found can 
> be a very long time with a loaded backup server with tape multiplex 
> action. On one server we ended up setting the number of tape drives 
> in the storage unit to one less then the number of tape drives to 
> hold one for restores. TSM will stop a housekeeping task to free up 
> it's tape drives  for a restore.
Actually our NetBackup restores are lot faster than TSM even including 
waiting for tape mount. 
> 
> 4) I do not understand this statement can you tell us more?
> 
> 5) I am an old line mode person so I can not speak much of the tsm 
> admin gui web interface. But I find that I can see from the tsm 
> server which sessions are running. A little less detail then the 
> netbackup backup jobs, but more then the netbackup restore jobs. But 
> I can also see the processes running in TSM with some stats. So with 
> the catalog backup I can see how many pages it has backed up out of 
> how many. And the catalog is a database so it's backup can run with 
> other backup server work, as long as one defines enought database 
> log space. You can also write sql queries to gather your own reports.
I have tried this, but the TSM database is an amputated DB2, with a very old 
SQL. Lot of time you end up write shell scripts anyway to get around the 
short-comings for the TSM sql.

> 
> 6,7) The schedule reports only summary status, For the completed 
> status they have been adding a little more detail with the return 
> codes for a little more detail on how bad things are. But like 
> netbackup it is a little hard to tell with the status of a few files 
> were not backed up if that is a good error or bad error. Over the 
> years they are passing more of the detailed error messages up to the 
> server so that you can fetch them from the server log. But the most 
> detailed log like netbackup is on the client. The dsmsched.log (you 
> can change the filename) without the quiet options lists each file 
> processed and what happened with it. The dsmerror.log file should 
> receive all the errors. Like netbackup it can sometimes be fun 
> trying to figure out what they mean. There are also trace flags that 
> can be turned on from the dsm.opt (option file) to turn on very 
> detailed logs.
In NetBackup you have a job monitor with different status codes to guide you 
to what problem is. And you can create logs for each daemon/process  

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu]On Behalf Of
> ida3248b AT post.cybercity DOT dk
> Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 4:40 PM
> To: Denton, Kevin M; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Cc: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Veritas Netbackup vs. Tivoli Storage Manager
> 
> Hello KD
> 
> Here is my points against TSM:
> 
> 1. You can't do restores from the TSM server, not even from the 
commandline.
> 
> 2. You can only have one session running to client scheduler (TSM 
> bpcd)
> 
> 3. Restores takes very long time to start, because the client have 
> to search the server database over the network.
> 
> 4. Restores are slow because the client updates the server database 
> over the network.
> 
> 5. There is no job monitor, quick status overview.
> 
> 6. You only get completed, missed or failed on a schedule and no 
> indication of the problem.
> 
> 7. There no logs to speak of on the clients and as far I know no 
> VERBOSE option.
> 
> I probably find some more points next time I have to work on one of 
> our TSM customers.
> 
> Regards
> Michael
> 
> On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 14:44:33 -0500, Denton, Kevin M wrote
> > Is anyone aware of any documentation out there that is pro 
> >  Netbackup versus TSM?
> > 
> > My management seems to have played a  few rounds of golf with some 
> >  IBM reps or something. I'd like to find some selling point versus 
> > TSM. I've done some poking around and  came across a  couple 
> > articles but they actually leaned more towards TSM....
> > 
> > Any help would be appreciated.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > KD
> > _______________________________________________
> > Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
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