Hello,

although there might be some dirty tricks, to force a backup to write to a
specific tape, I don't see any reason to do this. One great advantage of *SM
is, that (from the client perspective) you don't have to care about the
storage media anymore. *SM makes sure (when properly configured, of course),
that every version of a file backed up resides exacly twice in the
corresponding storage, one primary and one copy.

Therefore, the question to "restore a file from a specific tape" does not
make sense at all. You just request the restore of a certain version of a
certain file, and *SM will provide it to you.

To fully understand the "philosophy" of TSM, you better through everything
you know about "tape centric backup" over board, and start thinking in
storage pools and backup policies. I'm sure, you'll like it.

Joerg Nouvertne
http://home.wtal.de/the_swordsman







> -----Original Message-----
> From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU]On Behalf Of
> Eugene Awyong - Singapore
> Sent: Mittwoch, 18. Juli 2001 14:16
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Backup/Restore to a specific tape?
>
>
> Many Thanks for the replies to my last question. I'm pretty new
> at TSM so I
> hope you people out there can help me along the way.
>
>         I was wondering how it would be possible if I wanted to do a
> selective backup or say a normal backup to a specific tape (let's
> just say a
> scratch tape, to make things easier). Would it be possible to do it?
>
>         And how would I actually be able to restore a file off a specific
> tape? Let's say I have 5 full tapes and I would like to restore
> the 2nd copy
> of file ABC. I have tried using the GUI version
> (http:xxx.xxx.xx.xx:1581) to
> try and restore it but it does not seem to allow me to restore a specific
> tape's data, 'cos there seems to be only a point-in-time version (should
> have made a point-to-backup option as well?) Should I be using the command
> line to do this? Or will the GUI version allow me to restore my
> data as well
> (from what I hear, the GUI make things a whole less complicated so...)
>
>         I also cannot seem to locate the client node's backed-up files off
> the GUI. I can see what has been backed-up for the server-node
> itself, but I
> can't seem to find any options where I can see my client-nodes backed-up
> data. The backup from the client-nodes run perfectly fine, I just
> can't seem
> to see where/how I should go about restoring this data? (I need to do test
> backups, preparing myself for the 'Restore or Take-a-hike' day).
>
>         Thanks for any input you guys might have.
>
>