May I try to express an opinion here.
Why should we scare the newcomers in TSM world - TSM is not a tool for
companies able to spend tens and hundreds thousand dollars. This is
high-class product which can provide the best not only for Fortune 500
companies but even for Small and Meduim Enterprises. Of course standard
limitations apply - more you invest in your IT infrastructure, more it
will pay back.
If ADSM/(I)TSM was targeted only to installations able to buy a
many-drives libraries why developers spent additional time to have
LIBTYPE=MANUAL, mount requests and replies, reclamation stgpools, etc.
During the decades IBM showed many times that is targeting mainly high-end
markets but cannot behave like mass market does not exist. Example of how
they learned this was creation of IBM PC. Another example is the famous
old joke about how IT companies will make toasters - IBM will create a
toaster producing 200000 toasts/day and will plan market for 5-6 such
toasters in year :-) IMO this is not true anymore - IBM had to change and
definitely have changed.

In fact I do agree in some parts with both Etienne and Mark:
- TSM can work with standalone drives and autoloaders. I have made some
posts on the list about such configurations. If IBM/Tivoli would count my
vote it is to improve offsite reclamation with some sort of reclamation
stgpool. But even without it currently ITSM is still worth the money and
SMEs can buy ITSM Base Edition (no SAN/Library sharing, no DRM, no big
libraries) and benefit over full/incrmental/differential backup tools. For
example in mass market ITSM is much better than BackupExec and has
comparable price. A centure ago the cars were luxury, now they are not.
- I completely agree single drive is having less functionality than
multi-drive library. However there are a lot of companies needing only the
base functionaly and excess one is of no significant benefit to them. Many
many others will do themselves a BIG favour if buy more drives (this year
we convinced only two such companies, next year maybe more :-) A penny
invested even with 1000% profit will return less than the return of a
hundred with just 20-30% profit.

Each company/organization is specific. Ones prefer more automation and
less human interaction while others admit lower investment with little bit
more human work. It is just matter of policy and a really good product (I
think TSM *is* such a product) can successfully target both types. Some of
my posts on this list also were very emotional and sometimes even
offensive. I hope they were forgiven.

Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant






Mark Stapleton <stapleto AT BERBEE DOT COM>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
02.10.2002 16:26
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"


        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        cc:
        Subject:        Re: Off site copy with one drive???

...

I guess it all comes down to what's more important--the cost of a proper
library vs. the ability to dependably make multiple backups of your
valuable
data.

> I completely agree with you that a three drive (or at least two drives)
> library is far more practical with TSM but it is very expensive. In
> addition, what is the use of buying a 2 or 3 Tbytes library when you
need
> only 200 or 300 Gbytes.

You buy a smaller, scaled-down library. I stated earlier that single-drive
libraries were pretty much worthless. I should have said that they "were
pretty much worthless when used with TSM".
...