How Many Clients Are Too Many???

[tsmerian]

Greetings fellow TSM'ers,



I have a general performance question:



How many TSM Clients are too many to have on one TSM Server? Currently, I have 160 NT/2000 Clients connecting to 1 TSM Server on MVS. Or are clients not the delimiter? I have also heard from variuos people that the determining factor for too much for one server is the TSM Database size. I have heard that once the database becomes larger that 20 GB, the TSM Server starts to be "problematic." My database is at 36 GB! I have also heard vague statements like: "You only need another TSM Server if you're not completing your backups in your window, or if your restores are taking too long." But these statments really don't help, and I am having restore issues! I have been preaching to management for years about getting another TSM Server, but it keeps falling on deaf ears!



Any suggestions are appreciated.



Theo Merian

COUNTRY Insurance & Financial Services

 

[blobby]

Hi



I would say the db is very big. The number of clients would cause a network problem because of the number of connections but the TSM server should cope as it is upstreame of the FEP.

Are you expireing the inventory on a regular basis?, this should be scheduled not left to the 24 hour default? Also evaluate what operations you are doing. As the clients are NT do you need to backup the OS partition of every server as DC's are replicated. If the worst comes to the worst. install another instance of the TSM server on the same hardware. this will split the db but will cause some processing overhead. You can share one library amoungst several logical server instances.

Hope this gives you someting to think about.



Mail me if you want to discuss further.



Tony N

 

[davecotton]

Actually we have the largest database recorded, to date. Our db is over 160gb in size running on a 4-way Dell 6450 (Windows2000). Performance was fairly descent until we went over 110-120gb. We're now thinking of moving to AIX and splitting things up into 2 or 3 instances..

 

[TerryCox]

Dave !

What is takes up the majority of your database .Archives or Incrementals.

And how many cleints do you have ?

I've recently convinced my users to rely more on incrementals and only archive

monthly .

I've just trimmed down my database from 68GB to 56GB by removing some archive filespaces.

110 Clients running smoothly



Regards

Terry Cox

Royals Sun Alliance

 

[Brandonm]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font class="pn-sub">Quote:</font><HR></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT class="pn-sub"><BLOCKQUOTE>Actually we have the largest database recorded, to date. Our db is over 160gb in size running on a 4-way Dell 6450 (Windows2000). Performance was fairly descent until we went over 110-120gb. We're now thinking of moving to AIX and splitting things up into 2 or 3 instances..</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>





Note: As a former 1st level ADSM/TSM technical support engineer, the maximum database size i have witnessed is 380 gigs (I believe it was the max at the time)



there probably more than a few shops running 150+ gigs however I doubt any of them run it on Wintel.



380gig databases are NOT recommended =)



-Brandonm