Thats right.  Eventually, given time, to do a full system restore,
we have to mount basically all the tapes.  So a full system restore
is a pain.

TSM was built on the concept that we mainly back it up.  Restore
must be reliable, but speed of restore is not the primary goal.

<longwinded analogy>
I explained the way that data gets on all the tapes spread pretty evenly
with an analogy for some bosses before.

Imagine you have a large number of buckets with  marbles. (Yes, bucket
is a tape, marble is a file.)  The color of the marbles you get from
each client are different, so you can tell where they came from.

You fill buckets with marbles, but every day with marbles from the
clients (some of each color marble in each buckets), and a few marbles
are removed from the buckets (expiration) in a fairly uniform manner
(a handfull from each bucket, of various colors).

Since some buckets get pretty empty, and you want to reuse the bucket,
you pour the content of the most empty bucket in to the new bucket
you are filling today.  Now the bucket you empty can be reused.

Do this for a while.  Then look at the distribution of marbles in the
buckets that contain the marbles.

You will find a fairly normal distribution, even if you fill a bucket
with only one color (initial backup) initially.

If you are going to try this, make sure and use different sizes of
marbles too!
</longwinded analogy>


-----Original Message-----
From: Karel Bos [mailto:Karel.Bos AT NUON DOT COM]
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 10:31 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Backup User profiles


Just let the back-ups run over time to a non-collecated storage pool with
quiet a lot of clients and you will see. It will spread over all the tapes
in a storage pool.

Regard,

Karel
(Seen on LTO1 tapes)

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Otto Schakenbos [mailto:otto.schakenbos AT TELEFLEX DOT COM]
Verzonden: dinsdag 18 november 2003 17:22
Aan: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Onderwerp: Re: Backup User profiles


How can 20Gb be spread over a lot of tapes? If your tapes are really
that small consider a hardware upgrade.
an option to consider is image backup (when you have bigger tapes) this
will not help you with single file restores but in case of total
disaster it will be time saver (and job maybe).
one scenario could be
do a image backup every week or so to tape
do normal inc to a disk-library.(device class disk) so  no long search
and mount times. (also not so secure maybe but thats why you have you
image backup on offsite tape)
Remember that (to my knowledge but not sure have to look it up)  you
can't get single files back from an image backup so you need both.

regards


Otto Schakenbos
PC-Support

TEL: +49-7151/502 8468
FAX: +49-7151/502 8489
MOBILE: +49-172/7102715
E-MAIL: otto.schakenbos AT teleflex DOT com

TFX IT-Service AG
Fronackerstrasse 33-35
71332 Waiblingen
GERMANY




Thomas Rupp, Vorarlberger Illwerke AG wrote:

>Hi TSM-ers,
>
>How do you backup your server based Windows user profiles?
>
>I have to backup a W2K server with a 160GB disk where the Windows XP
>User profiles are stored
>- about 1.5 million files and 20GB.
>These files have spread over a lot of tapes - a restore of a user
>profile just took 4 hours due to
>mount wait and tape positioning time.
>Node Collocation is enabled - filespace collocation wouldn't help as
>this node has only one filespace.
>
>I will give Richard Sims suggestion on how to create a VIRTUALMOUNTPOINT
>on Windows a try.
>Or has anyone else found a way how to backup and restore user profiles
>efficiently?
>
>Client: 5.1.5 on Microsoft W2K cluster
>Server: 4.2.2.8
>
>Kind regards and greetings from Austria
>Thomas Rupp
>Vorarlberger Illwerke AG
>
>
>