HSM and Windows

[ccolht]

Is anyone actually doing this?



What 3rd party tools are needed?



Does it work?



I would appreciate any input.





Chuck

 

[sgabriel62]

If you are looking at Tivoli HSM to work on a windows platform - there is nothing available now. But there are substantial changes within Tivoli and Veritas environments by introducing new products like Enterprise Vault for example to assist in this area.

We are currently investigating this as well.

 

[briansc]

We too are looking into this and have been told that Caminosoft will be releasing a tivoli edition of their product Managed Server HSM. There is nothing on their website at the moment but I've seen the data sheet which says:



"Managed Server HSM – Tivoli Edition, running on a Windows 2000/2003 server, can manage files directly from its own resources to Tivoli storage pools. Or, optionally, it can act as a gateway to Tivoli storage pools providing access from multiple NetWare and Windows “managed” servers."



Hope this is of interest...



Bri

 

[rallingham]

I have been running Legato/EMC DiskXtender 2000 for Windows for almost 2 years now. It was installed when I came to my current opportunity and I have been working at it for quite some time.

In short I have had a nightmare type of time. There have been multiple problems, but the worst one at this point (and it has been going on for several MONTHS now) is the fact that DX is putting or showing, we don't know which one at this point, more data on a tape than it can hold.

For example I have DX set up to write a maximum of 100 gigs to tape (the default is 256 gigs). I have tapes reporting (within DX) that there are 355 GIGS of data on this 100 gig tape. When a Compact or Fetch is done, there is lost data. TSM shows the tape is full.



This is only one instance of problems with DX. There have been many others and each one has ended up with LOST DATA. That goes over like a lead ballon with management.

Do I have problems open with Legato? You bet. Are they doing anything about it? Your guess is as good as mine. They say they are, but several months of problems which have crippled the product (I cannot move data out right now to tape as I feel it is not reliable) leave me with a bad taste in the mouth and NO SOLUTION FROM DEVELOPMENT.



I am looking at converting my cluster to Linux or AIX. I am also looking at using HSM (Tivoli Space Management) but that could just be another set of problems to deal with. In any case BEWARE (in my opinion) DiskXtender.

Of course some stats might be useful. I have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 12 TBs of data under control of DX. Hence the distaste when I have lost data.



Has anyone else been running HSM on Linux (RH4)? If so I would like to know as that is the planned route at this time. Of course it will take quite some time to do this.

 

[tsmadmin27]

I was on a webinar today about HSM for HP and AIX. The windows client should be released around the middle of September. The 16th to be exact but IBM does not like to give hard dates for releases.



How HSM works is you install the HSM client just like the BA client. Then the files are migrated off of the local file system, a stub file is left in its place. The stub file contains the information necessary to locate and recall the migrated file.



There are three recall processes:



Transparent recall

Selective recall

Advanced transparent recall





John

 

[sgabriel62]

John;

Interesting news - but I would not hold your breath on this coming release. This coming release to the best of my knowledge will support >1024 characters in a path, and a few other enhancements we have suggested.

But I'll check with our Developer POC - yep we have one believe it or not.



Steven

 

[Craigy]

Currently, IBM TSM HSM supports only one filesystem on linux, that's IBM GPFS.

If you're not familiar with GPFS, or if you don't run IBM fastt hardware, don't even try: it's not simple.

On AIX, you can run TSM HSM on JFS, JFS2 or GFPS filesystems.

The JFS and JFS2 filesystems are relatively hardware agnostic, though bearing in mind a prerequisite is using AIX on pSeries, you're already more-or-less locked into IBM kit.

You also have HP-UX and Solaris TSM HSM though I haev no experience of those I'm afraid.



Hope this helps.



Craigy



<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>I have been running Legato/EMC DiskXtender 2000 for Windows for almost 2 years now. It was installed when I came to my current opportunity and I have been working at it for quite some time.

In short I have had a nightmare type of time. There have been multiple problems, but the worst one at this point (and it has been going on for several MONTHS now) is the fact that DX is putting or showing, we don't know which one at this point, more data on a tape than it can hold.

For example I have DX set up to write a maximum of 100 gigs to tape (the default is 256 gigs). I have tapes reporting (within DX) that there are 355 GIGS of data on this 100 gig tape. When a Compact or Fetch is done, there is lost data. TSM shows the tape is full.



This is only one instance of problems with DX. There have been many others and each one has ended up with LOST DATA. That goes over like a lead ballon with management.

Do I have problems open with Legato? You bet. Are they doing anything about it? Your guess is as good as mine. They say they are, but several months of problems which have crippled the product (I cannot move data out right now to tape as I feel it is not reliable) leave me with a bad taste in the mouth and NO SOLUTION FROM DEVELOPMENT.



I am looking at converting my cluster to Linux or AIX. I am also looking at using HSM (Tivoli Space Management) but that could just be another set of problems to deal with. In any case BEWARE (in my opinion) DiskXtender.

Of course some stats might be useful. I have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 12 TBs of data under control of DX. Hence the distaste when I have lost data.



Has anyone else been running HSM on Linux (RH4)? If so I would like to know as that is the planned route at this time. Of course it will take quite some time to do this.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>

 

[sthoppay]

TSM HSM for Windows is now released.



http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr-hsm/

 

[mofforwe]

you may want to have a look at www.southern-minds.com HSM solution as well.

 

[rallingham]

Yes the HSM for Windows from IBM is out and I do have it. I was hoping it would be better than Legato DX but let me warn everyone up front. This is the WORST MANUAL I have ever read.

For example using the command line gives one sample and I cannot make anything out of it. Also find out how it ties into TSM and to be able to schedule HSM Archives as opposed to TSM Archives is more than a little challenge. Perhaps it is me or where the sun and the moon are right now, but I can get little done from this product.



Now I've used HSM on MVS and I have installed and configured it on AIX and both worked as they should. But setting up the product once it is installed on Windoze is a joke. There is not a great deal in this small manual on how it hooks into TSM.



Yes I have the 5.3.2.0 client running and the HSM Agent and I tied into TSM 5.2.4.0 (server). Right now I am at a loss and any assistance from anyone would be helpful. The only reason you stop banging your head against the wall is it feels real good when you stop.

 

[mag0007]

where did you download it for WIndows?

 

[sgabriel62]

HSM for UNIX - I am only going to assume that its going to operate under the same fashion. Since I have not seen it yet, probably very very soon, but if I can assume a bit - sorry everyone. There will be a startup script which loads into the registry the necessary modules and creates the necessary services and enables to them to run manually.

Is there commands such as damautomigrate, dsmmigrate or dsmmigquery, dsmdu, or dsmls. If there are then, configuring HSM is going to be a brease. The DSM.opt will be populated with the HSM migration variables in Stanza one, the Client info in Stanza two, and so on and so on. Simply use the UNIX manual as your guide but apply Windows logic.



Guessing of c ourse - Let us know there this ends up - I'm highly curious



Steven

 

[PJ]

The HSM Windows documentation is lacklustre indeed and the whole product is very different from the unix HSM implementations. Rather than setting thresholds like in unix you define jobs running periodically. From what I've heard IBM had purchased the code from another company and not developed it from scratch themselves. We're currently evaluating it against the Ixos Enterprise Server and General-Storage Retrostor products. All of these are very unique in terms of features and the degree of possible TSM integration. So far I can say that all three of them work, which is a lot more than I could ever say about Legato DX.



Peter

 

[spidermila]

I am planning to switch from Legato DX to HSM. I have lots of data stored on WORMs. Will HSM be able to use those data and continue "doing DX's work" ?



I can't find any real HSM related documentation. Do you know about some?

 

[PJ]

Not a chance. You'll have to recall everything.



Cheers

Peter

 

[spidermila]

:sad:



So here comes another possibility - to install new version of DX and continue like before...

Do you think that HSM is worth of throwing all the old WORMs away???

 

[PJ]

If this wasn't a public forum I'd say "don't worry - DX already did the job of throwing your worms away for you".

Just out of curiosity: Why do you want to place HSM data on WORM anyway? Isn't disk much cheaper?



Cheers

Peter

 

[spidermila]

<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>If this wasn't a public forum I'd say "don't worry - DX already did the job of throwing your worms away for you".

Just out of curiosity: Why do you want to place HSM data on WORM anyway? Isn't disk much cheaper?



Cheers

Peter</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>



Because the data must be archived for a long time.

What do you recommend? I will have to change current version anyway, so I can switch to HSM... but it must work...

 

[PJ]

From where I'm standing it looks like the one and only way to keep data for a long time is flexibility. Your current setup relies on having DX, TSM and the WORMs around in a working, backward compatible setup for years or probably decades or even longer. Sooner or later you'll have to recall everything anyway. Better do it now, before it becomes so much that total recall is no longer an option. I know this sounds harsh, but HSM is a substitute for expensive online capacity and not a long term archiving solution. I'd keep it on disk or probably tape and I'd always pretest and doublecheck a path that enables you moving it all to an alternate if any of the following is end-of-life (either globally or just within your organization):

- Filesystem

- File-formats (MS-Office etc.)

- Operating System (Windows)

- HSM System inluding hardware

- DM System (TSM)

If any of these matter of factly determines your future just because you've HSMed some old data, you've got a problem. So far it sounds like you can still get around it by either extending your online capacity, recall everything and HSM it using TSM's new HSM or - if that's not an option - you can probably script a file-by-file solution. I'm afraid it won't really be easy either way.



Cheers

Peter

 

[spidermila]

Thank you for advice.

This will be hard anyway... There is always not only the technical side of problem... Those above are making final decisions and we will have to stick to it. I think that vision of changing whole architecture (buying new tape library, throwing all WORMs away, etc...) will not please them.

We will see.