Domain/mgmtclass/devclass best practices

opeth

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PREDATAR Control23

I am in the middle of a consolidation of a few TSM servers and as such have the opportunity to sort of redesign the way our domains are structured. It is currently configured by operating system, and them specific operating systems that are set to replicate via our storage device.

I am trying to use this as an opportunity to implement a "retention tier" classification that is easy to understand with the domains, for example:
Platinum: 30 days 30 versions replicated
Gold 30 days 30 versions
Silver 30 days 14 versions
Bronze 30 days 7 versions

Gold, siver and bronze going to the same VTL, Platinum going to a completely separate DR VTL.

What are your thoughts on this? I don't see why I should need separate domains for operating systems. I can use cloptsets to group servers with specific exclusion needs (one for all common windows systems exclusions, one for all Linux common exclusions etc). Would I be shooting myself in the foot in some way I am not seeing?
 
PREDATAR Control23

I was faced with the same situation many, many years ago and found the value of separating by OS, and DB type:

- Windows
- Linux/UNIX
- MS-SQL
- Oracle
- Exchange
- AS/400
- etc

The key is the restore/recovery speed, and what the Business dictates.

It also has a plus factor of faster backups. It would be even faster now that you are using VTL.
 
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PREDATAR Control23

How does separating by OS increase backup/recovery speed?
 
PREDATAR Control23

You can restore in parallel. However, since you are now in VTL, this maybe a moot point unless data from one server is intermixed with another, and so on. The idea is to have multiple storage pools for each Domain.

Most of my work was done on a physical tape system. Even with so many tape (physical) drives, by not separating domains (that has its own storage pool), backup and restore was slow.

Even on my current setup using Data Domains at the back end, I do separate Domains and I ran faster backups/restores. I have ran benchmarks with intermixed OS and non-intermixed OS and the latter is better for me.
 
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PREDATAR Control23

I am also running a data domain VTL. It is interesting you get better benchmarks with separated OS by domain.
What size tapes tapes do you define that seem to preform well?
 
PREDATAR Control23

I mostly use NFS to the Data Domain more than VTL. VTL is still slower. LTO3 is emulated with size set to 400 GB.
 
PREDATAR Control23

We are running TSM on windows so NFS is out, tried CIFS but it didn't preform well so still stuck on VTL.
400GB? that's huge. I am running them at 100GB. I am using colocation and scared of wasted space if I make the volumes too big.
 
PREDATAR Control23

We are running TSM on windows so NFS is out, tried CIFS but it didn't preform well so still stuck on VTL.
400GB? that's huge. I am running them at 100GB. I am using colocation and scared of wasted space if I make the volumes too big.

What wasted space? Remember it is VTL not actual space Partitioning to a specific size does not mean it is allocated as is. If the volume uses only 300 out of the 400, then the actual space used is only 300 not 400 with 100 as empty space.

In other words, do not look at VTL space allocation is terms of physical hard limits. Allocations are soft limits.
 
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