FastBack POC Help request from some one new to Fastback

[rvillano]

Hello to all of you in the Fastback forum.

I have quite a bit of experience with other TSM products but NO Fastback.
I have an opportunity with a perspective customer for a very large project.
This customer is starting from scratch with all new hardware and TSM Software.
The customer wants to stay with windows type servers rather than AIX or linux.
I have begun to read the fastback user's and install guide and the TSM fastback integration guide.
The release of fastback will be the most recent and the TSM server will be at 6.3.3 or 6.4

I have suggested to the customer to do a POC before going full scale on the project.

My questions begin:
can I use vmware guest for a test fastback client
can I use a vmware guest for a test fastback server
can I use a vmware guest for a test fastback DR server
will I have any problems testing this in a environment where all of these guests are in the same data center location.

I will use physical hardware for the TSM server connected to a TS3500 LTO Library.

I would very much appreciate any help you can provide me. I'm sure this will only be the start of many questions I
will have.

Best Regards,
Bob...

 

[GregE]

You can use a vmware guest for all that you've asked. All in the same DC is fine.

 

[rvillano]

Thanks Greg for your quick response. Do you have any general best practice on working with Fastback as a whole and
things such as using duplication or not and I'm confused as to how much is the max storage can i have on the Fastback DR hub server
and if the limit for the fastback server it's self is 2tb if using dedup or 8TB if not or I have just read 16TB ? what is the true Number

I hope you don't get to tired of my questions for a while like i said this is very very new to me

 

[GregE]

Well, I actually have not implemented it. I did extensive research and setup a pilot environment several months ago, but that's where it ended and I haven't been back to it. My testing wasn't with a TSM storage pool as the DR target so I don't have an experience with that or with the deduplication aspect of it. Mine method of DR'ing data was via FTP.

That disk space confused the heck out of me for some time. The 2TB limit is VMware drive limit, but I'm not sure what the disk limit that is inside of FB. There are different types of storage location you can create - disk, folder, etc. The 16TB limit, if I remember correctly, is total space per FB server. It's been awhile and these things are not as clear to me as they once were.