>We tried going direct-to-tape with our LTO.  That worked OK on Domino and
>Oracle, but it was terrible on file servers.

The underlying problem with file system backup and drives with mediocre 
start-stop
performance is in the "sputtering" way that Backup will send files as it 
encounters
them in traversing the file system.  Enlarged transaction buffering will help 
with
this.  A frontal disk storage pool, as many have suggested, also does the trick.
A more labor-intensive method would be to have a non-TSM (i.e., home-grown) tool
run through the file system to collect the names of all the candidate files and 
then
initiate a backup with the -FILEList option, to in effect cause streaming, 
eliminating
all the time gaps in candidate discovery.  It's a more desperate measure, but 
it may
suit some installations.

  Richard Sims, BU

    "Think different."  - Apple