I manage the TSM backups for my company.  Everything seems to be working
fine, but I am looking for advice for daily and monthly maintenance checks
that I can do to make sure that everything really is OK.

I am not as concerned with restoring the OS as I am with the SQL databases,
Novell NDS, and the data on our fileserver.  We do not use TSM for recovery
of the OS right now.  We use redundancy and clustering so in the event of a
single server failure it is acceptable to reinstall the OS on the failed
server.  Total Disaster recovery will be done with a hot standby site in the
near future.

Environment
  TSM 4.2.1.0 on W2K SP2
  W2K, SQL, and Novell clients
  DLT 8000 Library
  TDP for SQL 2.2

For maintenance I look at the following:
Daily
  q event * *  - Make sure backups are complete
  Backup the database and use DRM to move the db and data tapes offsite.
Weekly
  q db  - Make sure the DB is not full.
  I look for files that were missed in the backup.
  I use q DRM and q libvol to make all the tapes are accounted for.

I restore basic files every now and then without problem.  I have even
restored the TSM database.  During testing I did SQL restores, but have not
done a SQL restore since.  I have restored portions NDS, but have seen some
problems there.  NDS is my biggest fear.  I am planning on doing a complete
NDS restore as a test shortly, but sometimes a container restore does not
restore attributes in that container.  I could also restore the 100+ Gig
volume of data as a test, but I will soon not have enough free space to do
that.

Any advice is appreciated.

Scott Foley