Just a thought, and I'm sure you'll already have been over this, but
do the recovery scenarios for which you employ TSM for protection
require the SystemState etc to be backed-up/recovered? In some shops
OS instability/corruption/data loss is remedied by a rapid re-image
from a build server rather than recovery from TSM of the OS data (inc
SystemState etc). In these scenarios I'd think about questioning why
SystemState backups are taken in the first place. Perhaps this point
is increasingly relevant in rapid provisioning/virtualised
environments where TSM is only concerned with protecting application
data and configuration files.

As a side note, I genuinely can't remember the last time a client
required me to perform a SystemState/Object restore. Perhaps I've just
been lucky!

Cheers,

David McClelland
London

On 5 Nov 2009, at 18:10, Ben Bullock <BBullock AT BCIDAHO DOT COM> wrote:

So, we all seem to agree that the Windows 2008 SystemState is very
large (seems to be about 6GB on a fresh 2008 R2 installation), but
is there anything we can do about it?

It looks like it does a FULL copy of everything in the SystemState
every night. I've never really paid attention to the SystemState
backups, is that the way it's always worked? A FULL every night? No
TSM incremental-forever magic?

OK, so if we are saying "that's just how it's going to be" what are
folks doing about it? There seems to be a few possible issues:
   - Bandwidth issues to clients with slow connections.
   - The size in the storagepools of those larger SystemStates.
   - The lengthening of the backup windows on all hosts because of
the time needed to check/backup the systemstate.

   Changing the retention policy or dedupe can help with the large
size they will take on disk/tape, but I'm not sure what can be done
about the other 2 issues?

   We are rolling out a bunch of 2008 servers and as each host is
upgraded, the backup goes from 5 minutes to ~1 hour to backup. My
TSM server is going to get hammered: number of serviced connections
are going to go way up as connections linger longer, the amount of
data sent from the TSM server to the client to compare is now
~400MB, hitting the TSM DB pretty hard, overall TSM server
performance is going to suffer and I might have to buy more
horsepower/storage just to support the 2008 SystemState.

Options? Anyone? Anyone? Buhler?

Does TSM have some magic up it's sleeve in a future version that can
help us? (I just started testing the 6.1.2 version that just came
out, but it behaves the same with the systemstate).

About all I can think of is not backing up the systemstate or
perhaps only backing it up once a week, but neither of those are
good options.

Anybody else concerned about this or am I just being "the boy who
cried ARMAGEDDON"?

Ben


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Andrew Raibeck
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 3:38 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Win2008 System State

I am not aware of any links off-hand to any official Microsoft
statements.
Why would your customer doubt this? Alternatives that come to mind:

- Take a look at the install footprint of a base Windows 2003 vs.
Windows
2008:
  Windows 2003: C:\Windows has 16,000 files/3 GB
  Windows 2008: C:\Windows has 71,000 files/15 GB

There are, of course, other files, but the size of C:\Windows alone
is very
telling.

- If you do a google search on "windows 2008 system state size",
you'll
probably find some credible, albeit anecdotal evidence of the size.

- If you run a TSM backup-archive client "backup systemstate" command,
you'll see the size.

- If you get the VSS SDK, it comes with the vshadow.exe tool that
you can
use to get a sense of the size:

  vshadow -p -wm2 > youroutputfile

Then review the output. Run the same command on Windows 2003 and
compare
the sizes. There is clearly a lot more in the 2008 version.

- If your customer needs to hear it from Microsoft, then perhaps
this is a
question to ask directly of Microsoft.

Best regards,

Andy

Andy Raibeck
IBM Software Group
Tivoli Storage Manager Client Product Development
Level 3 Team Lead
Internal Notes e-mail: Andrew Raibeck/Hartford/IBM@IBMUS
Internet e-mail: storman AT us.ibm DOT com

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager support web page:
http://www.ibm.com/software/sysmgmt/products/support/IBMTivoliStorageManager.html


The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked.
The command line is your friend.
"Good enough" is the enemy of excellence.

"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU> wrote on 10/28/2009
10:46:19 AM:

[image removed]

Win2008 System State

Christian Svensson

to:

ADSM-L

10/28/2009 10:47 AM

Sent by:

"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>

Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"

Hi Guys,
Does anyone have a link to Microsoft where it says that Win2008
System State Backup is much bigger then Windows 2003 System State?
I need to prove for a customer that System State and System Services
is much bigger now with Windows Server 2008 and we need to setup
some policies for System State?


Best Regards
Christian Svensson

Cell: +46-70-325 1577
E-mail: Christian.Svensson AT cristie DOT se
Skype: cristie.christian.svensson

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