Comparing Incremental and Image backup plus image incremental mode - TSM v7.1.3

[xyzegg]

Hi,

Are there considerable differences between Incremental (Traditional) and Image backup with image incremental mode in terms of Tivoli Storage Manager server database space being consumed?

According to IBM, unexpected database growth can occur over time on a Tivoli Storage Manager Version 6 or Version 7 server. However, we can take steps to resolve, and potentially prevent, these issues.

Database growth might result from one or more causes. One of them is the number of object to manage.
We know that more and more objects are being managed over time, and this causes the database to grow.

This is natural, but we're trying to figure out if Image backup combined with image incremental mode (-mode=incremental) can be an alternative to traditional incremental backups of *.AUD (audit) and *.TRC (Trace) Oracle files (Linux Servers). We can ask our DBA to move them to an alternate volume and isolate them there. On our side, we can schedule a weekly full image backup and a weekday incremental mode backup.

Does it sounds good?

There is no restriction on backup method we can choose.

 

[marclant]

Image backups take very little DB space, a single object.

You mention it for certain files only, that won't work, images are for an entire disk. And if you need to restore one file, you need to restore the entire disk. Images exist to speed up DR.

 

[marclant]

With the DB being able to grow to 6TB, I would not worry much about size. Just make sure the DB is spread across multiple disks for performance
< 2 TB - 4 disks
4 TB - 8 disks
6 TB - 12 disks

 

[chad_small]

Image is great for a drive that has millions of files. If the drive is used for file server or the application is stupid and writes tons of meta data files and the admins or app are to stupid to clean it up then image will save your life in the event of a DR. TSM/Spectrum protect is a transaction server so lots of files make it act like a Yugo instead of a Porche no matter how awesome the server hardware.