1) How big is your current TSM DB?
2) How many clients do you support?
3) Is your 15 TB per month zillions of little files, or mostly big data
bases?
4) What type of tape drives/library are you planning to use?

TSM on AIX usually isn't CPU intensive except during EXPIRE INVENTORY; I
vote for 2 faster CPU's.

Most people hit an I/O bottleneck before the CPU bottleneck.

Just like on z/OS, make sure you buy enough disk/adapters/SSA loops so you
can spread your disk I/O over more than one I/O path.  (Or at least make
sure you can add an adapter/bus later if you need to add I/O paths.)  You
want to have your DB and recovery log on DIFFERENT disks than your storage
pools, if possible.  One big RAID array usually isn't the best choice for
speed.

You usually want at most 2 tape devices on a bus.

How much redundancy you require in disk/tape paths depends on how important
up time is to you.
Just like on z/OS, 100% up time is required if you are implementing the TSM
HSM function; less than 100% up time is probably satisfactory if TSM only
has to be available for nightly backups and occasional restores.

As a former mainframer, I can say with confidence you will be VERY HAPPY at
how well TSM runs on AIX, the I/O just screams....




-----Original Message-----
From: MC Matt Cooper (2838) [mailto:Matt.Cooper AT AMGREETINGS DOT COM]
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 1:12 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: TSM MF to AIX sizing?


Hello all,
        WE are currently running TSM 515 on z/OS 1.1 (9672-x57 gen 6) and
are considering moving it to AIX to free up CPU cycles that are being used
during 1st shift.   As we consider that versus doing thing to make it run
better on 2nd and 3rd (use 2 TSM servers, FICON to TAPE instead of ESCON,
LAN FREE for a few big Servers) I need to know the characteristics of the
AIX box to move to.  We are backing up about 15TB a month now.  I don't know
if we should be looking for a 2CPU machine or a 4CPU machine or if money is
best spent on 2 of the fastest CPUs versus 4 old CPU's.  It is hard to point
in a directions without knowing what the replacement system would be and
therefore its costs.  (yes I know that there is still 4GB of memeory, 2 GB
adapters, etc to cost out).   Is there anyone that can give my the voice of
experience or point me in the proper direction to correctly work this
problem though?
Thanks in Advance
Matt