Restores and cartridge availability

[mikle]

I have sooooo many questions as regards this DRM utility, but I will start with one. I remove tapes offsite on a daily basis, using the usual 'move drm * wherestate=mountable tostate=vault remove=bulk" command. When a restore is requested for a database here at the office, TSM requests the tape that is OFFSITE, in the OFFSITEPOOL. WHy ??

Also when migrating from a diskpool to tape, the AIX logs will request a tape that is OFFSITE which is in a 'filling' state. It will wait many many seconds until that tape is loaded. the proc cannot be cancelled until the tape is mounted. To me this is darn dumb. The migration does not start, the diskpool fills up, the informix logs do not clear. Why does the migration process not ask for another 'scratch' tape. I tried changing the requested tape to 'unavailable', but this made no difference ( uhhhh, Sunday morning 02h50 ... getting the tape back onsite is expensive and tedious )

 

[heada]

Are you moving the tapes from the primary storage pool or moving the tapes from the copy storage pool? I use almost the same command and I can perform restores on a daily basis without issue.



-Aaron

 

[mikle]

I am moving the tapes from the copy storage pool. i suspect that the problem creeps in somewhere to do with the fact that the affected servers are running their own TSM server to enable LAN FREE backups. So there are also defined primary and copy storage pools. * This is guess work. I have not yet gone down that road *

 

[heada]

Are you running actual server code on the clients or running the Storage Agent to get Lan-Free? I have done some minimal testing with Lan-Free (to see if it would buy me some time in my larger backups) and it acted like a normal client when it came to DRM and restoring from the primary vs. the copy. The client (with StgAgt) doesn't know about the copy since that is done on the server and only ever asks for the primary.



Are all the tapes in the primary marked as readable (either readonly or readwrite) and available? If marked unavailable or destroyed, then TSM will ask for the copy volume.



-Aaron

 

[mikle]

hi Andy. We are running actual server code, as our present version of Informix does not allow LANFREE backup. Each Unix box has its own defined TSM server with database, administrator schedules etc. Is a darn nuisance to administer. Especially as I do NOT want any sort of admin rights to production servers.

 

[heada]

Since you are running actual server code on each host you want to enable "Lan-Free" on, you need to make sure that they are library clients to a library master or that you have your library setup so that multiple servers can manage it. For example, I have two servers, libmaster and libclient. When I want to do a move drmedia on libclient, TSM will ask libmaster to checkout the volumes for it. This is called a shared checkout.



As far as not having Lan-Free support for Informix, it's my understanding that the TDP for (whatever) uses the API part of the client. The API on all clients since 4.2 (and 4.1 I think...but I could be wrong) support LanFree with the addition of the Storage Agent client. If you aren't using the TDP for Informix (if there even is one) then the normal BA client would be what you are using and it supports the Storage Agent natively. The StgAgt license is far cheaper then a server license and it should simplify admin processes too.



-Aaron

 

[mikle]

Aaron, thanks for all your feedback. I am finally going to go on some Tivoli training next month. At present our complete installation was set up by a third party who no longer support us. Hopefully I will be more adept at describing my problems, and questions in future.