ADSM-L

Monthly TSM FAQ 9/2002

2002-09-01 05:14:46
Subject: Monthly TSM FAQ 9/2002
From: Mark Stapleton <stapleto AT BERBEE DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2002 00:08:25 -0500
I will be posting this FAQ on the first day of each month. There are a
goodly number of questions and situations that crop up on a regular basis,
and it would be nice to have the answers of such questions gathered into one
place. Hopefully, this will cut down the number of questions that get asked
on a regular basis.

Naturally, I'm going to miss some questions that should appear. I would be
grateful for any requests to include additional material. (Please send them
directly to me, rather than to the list; my address is at the bottom of the
FAQ.)

updated
09/01/2002============================================================

QUESTIONS

01.   About the list itself
01-01.  How do I subscribe to ADSM-L?
01-02.  How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
01-03.  Why don't I see my questions on this list?
01-04.  How can I see my questions on the list?
01-05.  Who decides what questions go on the list?
01-06.  Is there a digest or archive of the list?
01-07.  How do I get more information about the list?
01-08.  Does IBM/Tivoli participate in the list?

02.   Types of questions asked
02-01.  What subjects are covered in this list?
02-02.  What kinds of questions can be asked?
02-03.  What kinds of questions can I expect answers to?
02-04.  What levels of netiquette are expected?
02-05.  What's the first thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
02-06.  What's the second thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
02-07.  What's the third thing to do when I still have a question about TSM?
02-08.  What's the fourth thing to do when I STILL have a question about
TSM?
02-09.  What are those "out of office" messages I keep seeing in the list?
02-10.  What's the single best thing I can do to improve the list?

03.   Available ADSM/TSM/ITSM resources
03-01.  What FAQs are already out there?
03-02.  What other sources of help can I find?
03-03.  How do I get "official" TSM support?

04.   Quick facts about questions asked on ADSM-L
04-01.  Is it called ADSM, or TSM, or ITSM? What's the deal here?
04-02.  What are backupsets? How can I use them?
04-03.  How does TSM do full/incremental/differential backups, just like
          my old backup software <fillintheblank> used to?
04-04.  How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
04-05.  How do I do mailbox-level restores of Exchange using the Tivoli Data
          Protection Agent for Exchange?
04-06.  How do I force TSM to do a full backup of a client?
04-07.  Where can I download the latest version of TSM/TDP?
04-08.  What's the very first thing I do after TSM is delivered to me?
04-09.  I'm getting message ANRXXXXX from the TSM server. What does it mean?
04-10.  I'm getting message ANSXXXXX from the TSM client. What does it mean?
04-11.  My large-scale restores are slow. How can I speed them up?
04-12.  How do I back up normally open files, like database files?
04-13.  What's all this about TSM and SQL select statements?
04-14.  My boss wants disaster recovery procedures. What's the best way to
do it?
04-15.  How do I get TSM to report problems to me?
04-16.  Why does version X of TSM have this bad bug in it?
04-17.  How come my space reclamation runs so slowly?
04-18.  I keep getting these "server out of license compliance" messages.
Why?
04-19.  My scheduled backups fail, but my manual ones work fine. Why?
04-20.  While backleveling my TSM client from 4.2.1 to 4.1.3, I get a
          "downlevel" message. Why?

ANSWERS

01-01.  How do I subscribe to ADSM-L?
Send an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message consisting only of the line SUBSCRIBE ADSM-L.

01-02.  How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
Send an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message consisting only of the line UNSUBSCRIBE ADSM-L. Do NOT try to
unsubscribe by sending email to ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU. All that does is 
annoy
the list members, and it doesn't get you off the list.

01-03.  Why don't I see my questions on this list?
That's the normal behavior of ADSM-L.

01-04.  How can I see my questions on the list?
If you want to see your own questions, send an email to
LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a message that 
consists
only of the line SET ADSM-L REPRO.

01-05.  Who decides what questions go on the list?
The list members. There appears to be no active moderation of the list. (No,
that's not a license to abuse the list. Complaints from the list members do
get listened to.)

01-06.  Is there a digest or archive of the list?
Indeed. There is an indexed version of the mailing list at http://adsm.org.

01-07.  How do I get more information about the list?
Send an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message consisting only of the line INFO. This will cause an email to be
returned to you with a list of documents available about VM.MARIST.INFO and
instructions on how to get them.

01-08.  Does IBM/Tivoli participate in the list?
>From Andy Raibeck, from the TSM client development group: "This list server
is owned and operated by Marist College, and is not in any way affiliated
with IBM. While some IBMers do participate on ADSM-L, they do so on an
unofficial, voluntary basis, and thus are not *required* to answer your
questions. If you require an answer from IBM, or if your situation is of an
urgent nature, then you should (also) go through IBM's official support
channels for assistance."

02-01.  What subjects are covered in this list?
Officially, only questions concerning the installation, configuration, care,
and feeding of ADSM/TSM/ITSM should appear. However, since backup and
recovery systems cover a wide range of IT and business issues, there have
been discussions about disaster recovery, tape and other storage systems,
and other Tivoli products (such as Storage Network Management and Decision
Support). Keep it centered around TSM, and no one fusses much.

02-02.  What kinds of questions can be asked?
You can ask pretty much any subject-related question you care to. There's no
guarantee you'll get an answer, though. Reposting an already-asked question
will sometimes get you an answer, but often it'll get you nothing.

02-03.  What kinds of questions can I expect answers to?
As with any other mailing list, the questions that lend themselves to short,
concise answers are the ones most likely to get answered. As an example,
you're much more likely to get an answer to "Does my new tape library, model
ZYX-666 made by Spelvin Corporation, work with TSM version 4.2?" than "I
just got TSM. How do I use it?" Keep your questions focused and narrow in
scope. See answers to questions 02-05, 02-06, and 02-07.

02-04.  What levels of netiquette are expected?
The standard civility is expected. If you're unsure of netiquette rules, go
to http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html or
http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/net/index.html.

02-05.  What's the first thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
Read this FAQ, particular section 4.

02-06.  What's the second thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
The second thing to do is to go to Richard Sims' exhaustive TSM FAQ at
http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts. More about online FAQs in answer
03-01.

02-07.  What's the third thing to do when I still have a question about TSM?
The third thing to do is to look for similar questions in http://adsm.org.
Chances are, your question has been asked before by someone else. Using the
proper keywords for lookups is a bit of an art, but PLEASE look there first.

02-08.  What's the fourth thing to do when I STILL have a question about
TSM?
Post your question. Always include all key information. If it is relevant,
such information should always include server level (found in the top banner
of the login administrative web page), client level (from the Help-->About
TSM splash screen in the client GUI), TSM server OS and OS level (include
service pack/maintenance level data), an *exact* description of the problem,
an extract of the server activity log, and the error messages verbatim. Cut
and paste text from sources; this makes typos much less likely. Confusion re
igns when you commit a typo in your question; you'll get a flood of "you've
misspelled your command" answers, which is not what you're probably looking
for.

02-09.  What are those "out of office" messages I keep seeing in the list?
Some email clients have a clever little feature that can be set to tell
those who send senders of email that the recipient will be out (and will
thus not be immediately responsive). Unfortunately, some people don't know
how to configure these clients not to send such messages to mailing lists.
What is most annoying about these messages is that they appear in multiple
languages; this makes filtering them out difficult.

02-10.  What's the single best thing I can do to improve the list?
TRIM YOUR REPLIES! (Sorry for the shout.) Trim back what you quote from the
previous poster to the essential information only. Get rid of the greetings,
the .sigs, and the chatty stuff. (I would bet this measure alone would cut
half the length of a download.)

03-01.  What FAQs are already out there?
There are a few (including this one), but the star that far outshines them
all is Richard Sims' page at http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts. It is
organized by keyword, it is *exhaustive*, and it is updated frequently.
(Say, Richard, when are we going to see your shining face back in the list?)

03-02.  What other sources of help can I find?
There are several sources of valuable help for TSM problems.
--The ADSM-L mailing list is a good resource; however, like most mailing
lists, you must separate the answers from those who know from the answers of
those who don't. The best way to do that is to read it frequently; you'll
soon learn who hits the nail with the hammer most often.
--The same caution extends the ADSM-L online archive at http://adsm.org.
This archive is indexed and searchable, although personal experience shows
that the search function could use some work.
--Tivoli maintains extensive documentation on all TSM products. You can find
Tivoli documents, in PDF and HTML format, at
http://www.tivoli.com/support/public/Prodman/public_manuals/td/TD_PROD_LIST.
html.
--Tivoli technical support, although not as fast to respond as in past
times, is still one of the best technical support lines in the market today.
The telephone number is 800.848.6548. You will need your customer number,
which you should have gotten when you purchased TSM, and the name of the
'official' contact person designated when the order was placed; without
both, they will not be able to help you.
--IBM maintains a documentation system they call Redbooks. Redbooks are
rather like O'Reilly's "missing manuals"; they contain information that
doesn't make it into the standard software manuals. There is a lot of good
TSM information in some of them. You can find redbooks in .PDF format at
http://redbooks.ibm.com. WARNING: Redbook information is not "official" IBM
information, and official support is not predicated upon them.

03-03.  How do I get "official" TSM support?
As I understand it, those who buy TSM receive support from Tivoli for one
year from date of purchase. After that, support must be purchased. Contact
your Tivoli reseller for details.

04-01.  Is it called ADSM, or TSM, or ITSM? What's the deal here?
[I received a *lot* of feedback from version 0.9 of this answer. I
reluctantly decided to cut most of the history out of this answer; including
all the quality information I got would have made this answer much longer
than the question itself really merits, and it's not a question asked all
*that* often.]
The backup and restore software package we refer to today as Tivoli Storage
Manager was owned by IBM and known as Adstar Distributed Storage Manager
(ADSM). Later, Tivoli took ownership and changed the name to Tivoli Storage
Manager. The current official name of the software is IBM/Tivoli Storage
Manager (ITSM).

04-02.  What are backupsets? How can I use them?
Backupsets are created from the latest (active) version of each file on a
client's system. These files are copied from data already stored in TSM
storage (disk, tape, or other media) to a single "file". Thus it is not
necessary to do an extra backup across your network to create a backupset.
Backupsets cannot be browsed like backups and archives; you can, however,
use wildcards to restore files. You can look at the contents of a backupset,
provided you know the backupset's name, from Q BACKUPSETCONTENTS.

04-03.  How does TSM do full/incremental/differential backups, just like
          my old backup software <fillintheblank> used to?
You're not using your old backup software anymore. TSM uses a backup/restore
philosophy unlike any other backup software. Once the initial full backup of
a client is finished, TSM then only backs up files that are new or have
modified. This sort of backup used to be called "incrementals forever", but
is more accurately described as "progressive backups". There is not a way to
perform differentials; you don't need them anymore anyway.

04-04.  How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
(This question is answered twice in this FAQ because it needs to be.) Send
an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a 
message
consisting only of the line UNSUBSCRIBE ADSM-L. Do NOT try to unsubscribe by
sending email to ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU. All that does is annoy the list
members, and it doesn't get you off the list.

04-05.  How can I do mailbox-level restores of Exchange using the Tivoli
Data
          Protection Agent for Exchange?
Not in a straightforward way. Microsoft does not support mailbox-level
Exchange backups or restores. In a nutshell, the only (best) way to do
mailbox-level restores is to restore the entire Exchange information store
and directory to a staging Exchange server, and then use the Exchange
administative software to move the desired mailbox from the staging server
to the production server.

04-06.  How do I force TSM to do a full backup of a client?
>From the command line, run
          dsmc selective <drive_letter>:\* -subdir=yes          (Windows)
          dsmc selective /<filespace>/* -subdir=yes             (UNIX)
to backup the entire drive/filespace. From the GUI, press the BACKUP button,
select the desired data to backup, use the pulldown menu to change from
"Incremental (complete)" to "Always backup", and press the "Backup" button.

04-07.  Where can I download the latest version of TSM/TDP?
The latest full versions of TSM backup/archive clients are available from
the ftp site
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/maintenance.
You cannot download the (required) base level of TSM server code, but you
*can* download the latest version of the server patches at the above ftp
address. Similarly, you cannot download the (required) base code for Tivoli
Data Protection software, but you can download their patches at the above
ftp address. Latest base code for the TSM server and TDP agent are available
from your Tivoli reseller.

04-08.  What's the very first thing I should do when I start using TSM?
Read the Administrator's Guide, cover to cover, and take notes. We know,
it's not exactly scintillating prose. Stay with it. You'll be much happier
later.

04-09.  I'm getting message ANRXXXXX from the TSM server. What does it mean?
>From the administrative command line, type
                help anrxxxxx
and read the message. You can also look up the message in the TSM Messages
manual, and there is an online version of this service at www.tivoli.com

04-10.  I'm getting message ANSXXXXX from the TSM client. What does it mean?
>From the client command line, type
                help
Navigate through the menus to find information about the message. You can
also look up the message in the TSM Messages manual, and there is an online
version of this service at www.tivoli.com.

04-11.  My large-scale restores are slow. How can I speed them up?
1) Use collocated tape pools. (Just the primary pools, not the copy pools.)
2) Use DIRMC.
3) Upgrade to TSM server 5.1 to take advantage of multithreaded restores and
MOVE NODEDATA.
4) Check your network settings to make sure that you're getting maximum
bandwidth.
Please note that all but number 4) are of no use once the need for a large
restore comes up. These are all preventative measures that must have been in
place for some time prior to the need to restore.

04-12.  How do I back up normally open files, like database files?
You can use the Tivoli Data Protection agent; they come in types that
support most major database formats. You can also use an open file agent,
like St. Bernard's Open File Manager. You can buy other applications, like
BMC's SQL-BACKTRACK, that handles many open database files. Or you can
temporary close the application that created/used the open file, back the
file up, and then restart the application. Each option has its advantages
and disadvantages.

04-13.  What's all this about TSM and SQL select statements?
You can write SQL select statements to query the TSM database. There are
some limitations (joins are only partially supported). You can get started
by running
        help select
from the administrative command line. You can do some pretty neat things
with SQL statements; browse the mailing list for a plethora of examples, or
look at the file scripts.smp in your server subdirectory.

04-14.  My boss wants disaster recovery procedures. What's the best way to
do it?
Answering this would take pages and pages, and much of it depends on your
resources and your business needs. TSM is a fine tool to include in your
disaster recovery planning, but setting it up for your needs is a
non-trivial task. If you don't want to do the proper research (or don't have
the time), contract or hire a professional who knows how.
Rule #1 of disaster recovery: Practice it before you have to.

04-15.  How do I get TSM to generate daily reports for me?
With some effort. TSM has no native reporting tools included. You can use
OS-level scripting (tough with Windows unless you use Perl), you can use
applications like Tivoli Decision Support for Storage Management, or you can
use an SNMP-aware monitoring system. (The MIBs for TSM are in the file
adsmserv.mib, found in the server subdirectory.)

04-16.  Why does version X of TSM have this bad bug in it?
Yes, there are bugs in TSM. It is a large, complex, evolving piece of
software that has to react to literally millions of different combinations
of client hardware and software; the big surprise is that there are not
*more* bugs in it. If you run across a bug (or a perceived bug), post it to
the list, or scan the APAR list on www.ibm.com to see if it's already been
reported. To get rid of the bug, upgrade TSM to a level where the bug has
been fixed.

04-17.  Why does my space reclamation runs so slowly?
If tape space reclamation tries to move files which also exist in a cached
diskpool, the algorithm that TSM uses for file access will pull the file
from the diskpool rather than the tapepool. This situation causes
reclamation to run *very* *slowly* (for reasons too complex to go into in
this FAQ). Tivoli claims that a fix of this would require a massive rewrite
of code, and is not particularly interested in doing it. The workaround is
to turn off caching for the diskpool.

04-18.  I keep getting these "server out of license compliance" messages.
Why?
You are using more of a particular resource than your TSM server is licensed
to handle. Run a QUERY LICENSE to get a list of what you're licensed for,
and what you're actually using. TSM runs on an honor system; it will
continue to run even if you're out of compliance.

04-19.  My scheduled backups fail, but my manual ones work fine. Why?
This almost always occurs in Windows servers, and it's always a Windows
permissions problem. The scheduler runs as service with System account
privileges. By default all files are read/writeable by System; however,
there are Windows admins out there who remove System privileges from files.
When a manual backup is run, you're using the permissions of the person who
logged on, not System. (You can't log on as System, as it's a
non-interactive account.) The real solution is reset all files to have
System read/write privileges. If that's not possible, you need to give the
scheduler a logon with privileges that have access to all files that you
want backed up.

04-20.  While backleveling my TSM client from 4.2.1 to 4.1.3, I get a
          "downlevel" message. Why?
When a node backs up to a TSM server, the level of TSM client being used is
recorded as part of the node definition. When you backlevel the client (say,
from 4.2.1 to 4.1.3), TSM won't allow it to happen because it thinks you're
using a more recent version of the client, which may have features not
available in the old version. The fix is to call TSM support and have them
step you through the process to fix the node definition. This fix is
potentially dangerous to the database, which is why it's not distributed on
the mailing list.

--
Mark Stapleton (stapleton AT berbee DOT com)
Certified TSM consultant
Certified AIX system engineer
MCSE

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
  • Monthly TSM FAQ 9/2002, Mark Stapleton <=