Reclamation of Offsite Tapes -- Should it be done Daily or weekly

anandgmenon

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PREDATAR Control23

Hi All,

We use DRM to take copy tapes to DR where we do daily restore of the TSM DB on the DR TSM Server.

At present, we run reclamation daily for 6 hours after we take the tapes to DR.


What is the best practice to be followed for reclamation of offsite tapes ???

1. should it run daily or less frequently
2. Should reclamation run before the tapes are taken to DR every day ???
 
PREDATAR Control23

Depends.

If the TSM server manages a lot of storage pools and does not have the resources to handle daily reclamation, then go for weekly.

I had done both: daily and weekly and, I don't think, there is no 'real' best practices for this. The only thing I watch out before is the resue parameter which must match the DB expiration series. If it is 8 days for the DB, reuse is also set for 8 days.
 
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PREDATAR Control23

Hi Moon-Buddy,

In our setup , following is the drm setup

q drmstatus

Recovery Plan Prefix:
Plan Instructions Prefix:
Replacement Volume Postfix: @
Primary Storage Pools:
Copy Storage Pools:
Active-Data Storage Pools:
Not Mountable Location Name: NOTMOUNTABLE
Courier Name: COURIER
Vault Site Name: VAULT
DB Backup Series Expiration Days: 60 Day(s)
Recovery Plan File Expiration Days: 60 Day(s)
Check Label?: Yes
Process FILE Device Type?: No
Command File Name:


Also the reuse delay on our Copy storage pool is set to 0 and not 60.

Delay Period for Volume Reuse: 0 Day(s)

I guess the only implication for this will be that we will not be able to return the TSM DB to an older date will all the data . Is this correct.???

In our case since we do daily restores of TSM DB, we dont have such a requirement.

With this setting in place, can we just reuse the tapes shown in "Vault retreive state" by DRM ???

Hope we can do a normal checkout of such tapes from DR TSM server and take them to PROD .. Kindly confirm if this will be ok.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Hi Moon-Buddy,

In our setup , following is the drm setup

q drmstatus

Recovery Plan Prefix:
Plan Instructions Prefix:
Replacement Volume Postfix: @
Primary Storage Pools:
Copy Storage Pools:
Active-Data Storage Pools:
Not Mountable Location Name: NOTMOUNTABLE
Courier Name: COURIER
Vault Site Name: VAULT
DB Backup Series Expiration Days: 60 Day(s)
Recovery Plan File Expiration Days: 60 Day(s)
Check Label?: Yes
Process FILE Device Type?: No
Command File Name:


Also the reuse delay on our Copy storage pool is set to 0 and not 60.

Delay Period for Volume Reuse: 0 Day(s)

I guess the only implication for this will be that we will not be able to return the TSM DB to an older date will all the data . Is this correct.???

In our case since we do daily restores of TSM DB, we dont have such a requirement.

With this setting in place, can we just reuse the tapes shown in "Vault retreive state" by DRM ???

Hope we can do a normal checkout of such tapes from DR TSM server and take them to PROD .. Kindly confirm if this will be ok.

60 days is of no consequence, in my opinion. Who would want to restore TSM Databases that are 60 days old, and cannot find the files to restore because expiration and reclamation has taken over and rearrange data location? In a real disaster even 3 days is already a mess - you really want to be as close as possible to what you have for the business to get back on its feet. This is where BCP takes over from DR.

I also don't know why you restore the TSM DB daily. Where is it restored to?

So, a value between 5 to 8 days is normally what most use as a 'de facto'. I would recommend reducing to 7 or 8 from 60 and setting resue to 7 or 8.
 
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PREDATAR Control23

Hi Moon-Buddy,

Every day we run the following script on Production TSM and then move the TSM DB & Copy tapes to offsite ( DR ) where we restore the TSM DB and make the DR TSM Server point in time to that of Production TSM .


tsm: >q script recovery f=l

Name Line Command
Number
---------- ------ ------------------------------------------------------------
RECOVERY 1 ba stg disk offsite w=y
5 ba stg onsite offsite w=y
10 ru delvolh
15 ba db dev=lto5 t=dbs w=y
20 ru delvolh
25 ba db dev=lto5 t=f w=y
30 ru delvolh
35 ba volh filename=/home/tsm1/recoverydir/volhist.out
40 ba devconf filename=/home/tsm1/recoverydir/devconf.out

tsm: >q script delvolh f=l

Name Line Command
Number
---------- ------ ------------------------------------------------------------
DELVOLH 5 del volh tod=today t=DBS
10 del volh tod=today t=STGN
15 del volh tod=today t=STGR
20 del volh tod=today t=STGD
25 del volh tod=today-2 t=DBB


Also if reclamation moves data across Offsite tapes, the next "Backup storage pool" command should copy these moved data once again to copy pools which should make the data consistent with the next TSM DB Restore.. Am i right here ????


If we set the dbbackup expiry and re use delay to 7-8 days, then should we run offsite reclamation also once in 7-8 days ???


Awaiting your feeback ....
 
PREDATAR Control23

Yes, you could run recalamation then once every 7 days if you have 7 days for DB expiry. You are then well covered.
 
PREDATAR Control23

Also if reclamation moves data across Offsite tapes, the next "Backup storage pool" command should copy these moved data once again to copy pools which should make the data consistent with the next TSM DB Restore.. Am i right here ????
 
PREDATAR Control23

Also if reclamation moves data across Offsite tapes, the next "Backup storage pool" command should copy these moved data once again to copy pools which should make the data consistent with the next TSM DB Restore.. Am i right here ????

You should not be too worried about the details.

TSM takes care of this. All you need to understand is that the TSM DB is taken at a time when all backup and copy have been done so TSM knows where all are set.
 
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PREDATAR Control23

Hi Moon-Buddy,

i have 2 more queries.

1. As we take Offsite tapes to DR for TSM DB restores daily , can the Offsite reclamation run daily anytime after the TSM DB backups happen at Production ??? .. Or do we need to wait for checking out the Offsite tapes first to kick off the reclamation ???

2. Can we modify the DB Backup expiry days / Re use delay parameters on the fly in TSM ??? .
 
PREDATAR Control23

Hi Moon-Buddy,

i have 2 more queries.

1. As we take Offsite tapes to DR for TSM DB restores daily , can the Offsite reclamation run daily anytime after the TSM DB backups happen at Production ??? .. Or do we need to wait for checking out the Offsite tapes first to kick off the reclamation ???

Wait after DB backup has run and all tapes checked out

2. Can we modify the DB Backup expiry days / Re use delay parameters on the fly in TSM ??? .

Yes. see 'HELP SET DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS' and 'HELP UPDATE STGPOOL'
 
PREDATAR Control23

Hi Moon-Buddy,

We have modified our DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS and reuse delay parameter on our copy storage pool to 2 .

With these modified settings , if we choose to run offsite reclamation daily , is there any risk of DR Restore failure ????
 
PREDATAR Control23

Provided that you don't restore the TSM server environment beyond the 2 day window, you should be fine.

I had my resuse and db expiry days at 7 in one installation and manage to do restores correctly within the 7 day window.
 
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