planned offsite strategy of a tsm newbe

kwesi

ADSM.ORG Member
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
26
Reaction score
1
Points
0
PREDATAR Control23

hi ppl :)

as a tsm newbie i try to plan a backup strategy with TSM. i used backupexec(symantec/veritas) and dataprotector (Hp) before but never tsm.

The incremental forever strategy used by tsm worries me a little bit, because i was used to do full-backups every week and offsited them.

now, in tsm i dont know (also after reading redbooks and more...) how to realise this in the best way... maybe some of you TSM experts can give me an advice :)

i have to backup about 30-40 servers with tsm.

so i planned to backup with 3 storage pools with migration:


1. Disk_Pool (disk)
2. Tape_Pool (tapes)

3. Offsite_Pool (also tapes)



every week or month (interval not sure now) i want to copy disk and tape pool to the offsite_pool and define the tapes as offsite to take them out of the lib and to another place. of course i also want to backup the database and offsite this tape too. so if the tsm server crashes i could set up a new one, restore the database and everything is fine.



my questions are:
- does this work like i imagine?

- is this the best solution/strategy to deal with offsite media with tsm?

- if files expire, are they unavailable/deleted in the database or can they be restored with offsite tapes?

i would be very grateful if i get some opinions of expierienced tsm-users/admins to get this working in a right way:)
 
PREDATAR Control23

kwesi,

You've got the basics of how it's supposed to work.

- does this work like i imagine?
Pretty much. You need to define your offsite_pool as a copypool, and backup disk_pool and tape_pool to it. Do this on a daily basis so you're not having to do a week/month worth all at once- and to protect you against media failure. (Note: These tasks need to be scheduled by you, theres nothing defined by default)


- is this the best solution/strategy to deal with offsite media with tsm?
There are many ways to deal with this through TSM, there is no best solution. You need to find what works for your environment and requirements the best. Some people offsite their tapes daily, some use VTL's and dont do any physical media offsiting. Things such as Archives, Backupsets & Collocation are all different options you could explore.

What you've outlined is one of the more traditional ways to do things. I would personally be offsiting tapes on a weekly (or faster) basis, however your needs may vary.


- if files expire, are they unavailable/deleted in the database or can they be restored with offsite tapes?
If files are expired they are gone from the database. You can restore your whole TSM server from your offsite database backup, and then recover those files from your offsite tapes (theres more to it than that, just a quick answer here). This isn't something you'd do every day though.


Take a look at the DRM module, as it is designed to help with this process. Redbook to be found here if you dont already have it:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246844.pdf
You can also find a lot of posts on here with information about how others do this.

This is a fundamental part of backup and restore, so don't rush it. Take time to find out what your clients needs are (DR recovery times, offsite frequency, retention times etc).

-Chris
 
PREDATAR Control23

While backupexec and the like simply have catalogues, TSM has a full-fledged database that keeps track of all of the files for a client and where they are located. As such, you do not NEED full backups all the time. (The exception being databases and other such applications.) Are you familiar with remote disk mirroring? Would you, once a month, wipe out the target disk and start the mirror from scratch? Why not? The reason you wouldn't do such a thing is basically the same reason why you do not have to do it with TSM.

How often you move tapes offsite depends on SLAs you have with the business units. If you don't have any, I would highly suggest you start compiling some. They do not have to be complex, but they define expectations.

If you only have to move tapes offsite every week, I would still perform the "backup stgpool" every day for performance and simplicity.
 
PREDATAR Control23

thanks for your quick and qualified answers.

i tested copy storage pools... it works nice.

i'll evaluate backupsets & archives also for optimum backup.


with incr 4 ever i have to rethink a few strategies we used in the past...
e.g. we re sending daily tarballs(from linuxes) to a win-server where we backup it (currently backupexec).

every day its a new file.... *argl*

i will continue reading.
 
PREDATAR Control23

hi again,

could i add please a fundamental question...

during the evaluation of tsm in our environment, its getting clearer that the companies backup policy is keeping all data forever. ("who knows maybe we could need that file some time...")

so in tsm i would have to set retention time for every last file version to no limit. existing files should be available in 7 versions for 1 year.

wouldnt this create huge amounts of data over e.g. 1 year?

they also need to restore in time (e.g. we need file of march 07 ...) but tsm does not do time retention ... i see problems with the version retention.

am i wrong or is this philosophy not fitting to tsm?

it seems to fit more to Grandfather-father-son backup. but i saw in this board that somebody solved it with tsm like that:
http://adsm.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6251&highlight=archive+policy+offsite


am i wrong or do we have to change the backup policy to use tsm efficent.

thx in advance!
 
Last edited:
PREDATAR Control23

When they say "who knows maybe we could need that file some time...", ask them how they intend to find that file; and when/if they did, how would the read it?! Does your company have to worry about compliance or litigations? If not, why keep stale data. If so, then you do not want to keep stale data! Show them how much it would cost for this policy of laziness. Do not forget the added costs of management and the extended time it would take to recover a system.

If they insist on keeping everything for ever, use archives and insist on a secondary TSM server that would be used solely for this purpose.
 
PREDATAR Control23

maybe i can accomplish this goal doing normal backups with a retention of e.g. 30 days and generating a backupset of the important files once a month?
 
PREDATAR Control23

A backup set works per node I can't remember if you can specify a file system, but I do know that you can't do this for individual files or folders. If you have specific files/folders that need to be retained, then use archives.
 
Top