Rick -

I think you're perceiving the FAILED column of the Activity Summary
table to be a kind of boolean, or condition code.  It is actually the
number of objects which the (B/A) client reported to have failed in
its attempt to back them up, as can occur when a transient file in a
file system disappears before TSM gets to reading it for the backup.
I don't run TDPs, but I don't believe that this "failed objects
count" pertains to them, given that they operate in TSM API
"streaming" mode.

For my money, I leave the assessment of backups success to client
administrators, who own and are responsible for the data being backed
up, rather than try to "read tea leaves" on the TSM server.

   Richard Sims    at Boston University