TSM on Linux or Windows

[JarrodB]

Okay,

First I'm not trying to start any kind of flame wars here! We are a fairly small shop (about 50 servers or so) that has mostly Windows systems . We do use VMWare heavily and have probably 75% of our servers running as VMs. From an OS comfort level, I'm fine with either Windows or Linux. My question is if there are any benifits / problems with running TSM on Linux - probably RHEL versus running it on Windows 2003. I know this is very very broad but I'm looking for a general feel from the community. I should also point out that I am fairly new to TSM. The last version I used was 4.1 about 7 years ago or so.

Thanks!

 

[zatogo]

I spend much of my time implementing new TSM servers for our clients...a fairly even mix of Linux, Windows and AIX. In my opinion, there are a couple of main factors dictating the choice:
1. Size of the environment (both number of clients and the amount of data moved).
2. Comfort of the administrators with the OS that the TSM Server will be running on.
3. Availability of device drivers for the OS's you are considering.

You are correct...50 TSM clients is not a lot for either a Windows-based or Linux-based TSM Server...the other question here is how much data to be backed up nightly?

I think most would concur that on the same, adequately powered, server hardware, that Linux is a bit more efficient and powerful when it comes to moving data versus Windows.

That being said, I have a number of clients moving more than 1 TB of data nightly to a Windows based TSM Server.

You also have to watch for the available and supported drivers for Linux based systems...especially as it relates to SAN storage and tape libraries...just do your research in advance and you should be fine.

Regardless of OS, make sure you have enough processor, memory, Nics and HBAs in the TSM Server.

 

[JarrodB]

Zatogo,

Thanks for the feedback. That is kind of what I was thinking too from a general level. I guess my next question is if IBM plays favorites with one platform or another. For example - a patch for TSM comes out on AIX first and then trickles down to Windows weeks / months later? Basically, we can either do Linux or Windows on the blade that we're going to install TSM on and I want to make sure that there aren't any "gotchas" with one platform over another.

 

[zatogo]

We've always avoided putting TSM Servers on a blade so I can't speak to the performance/capabilities there.

Our primary reason for this avoidance is the traffic that TSM tends to move through the ethernet and fiber cards. During peak loads it can be quite significant and this doesn't fit to well with the Blade center model of sharing ethernet and fiber ports among blades.

Like I said above, though, I don't have any real world experience to go from to back my arguement above...just theory.

 

[PJ]

We tried blades in our smaller shops and dropped the idea quickly for the reasons you mentioned - interface scalability was the main problem. When it comes to windows vs. linux, I'd pick (AIX ) windows because of linux's driver/kernel dependencies. You may fake around the issue by linking across modules here and there but in the end windows will be less trouble - at least for a single server environment. In theory linux may perform a little better but its just not worth the trouble. With multiple servers, I'd prefer linux because of windows' inability to easily script device takeovers and windows' lack of a concurrent access filesystem.

And of course, even for a shop running no AIX at all, it should still be an alternative. There isn't that much to learn for a linux admin to get along just fine with AIX and the hardware isn't that much more expensive than intel based machines with the same thruput.

PJ

 

[Mita201]

If there is choice between win and lin, then definitely Windows. I love Linux, but not with TSM - lot of problems. If you need enterprise class software like TSM, work with OS that have good support. Best for TSM is probably AIX, but if you can't afford system p, then choice is easy: Windows.

 

[ypcat]

With TSM its all about moving data and you're only as fast as your slowest link. In a blade center I believe all the blades share a midplane which the TSM blade will hog from time to time so you might want to rethink that and go with a separate server.

AIX is a good choice for a platform because it is stable, supported by the application vendor and doesn't change so fast that you are constantly upgrading as you frequently are with Linux. I dropped Linux as a personal OS because everytime I turned around there was a new update I had to install to stay current and QA was less than stellar. I don't have time for a 'toy OS' where people are constantly adding things to it and forcing me to upgrade and/or reboot.

Windows is not my first choice because in order to harness the true power of TSM you will need to script. Much of what I must do daily to be an effective TSM admin is automated in my scripts. As was already said it is easier to do this in a shell than almost anything else, and I have seen uptimes on AIX boxes measured in years. I don't know of any Windows boxes that don't require a reboot after almost any patch.

I'm sure many will disagree with me here but AIX on an appropriately sized dedicated server is the way to go in my opinion.

 

[JarrodB]

Thanks for all the positive feedback everyone. We're probably going to go with Windows at this point. As far as te bladecenter goes, it looks like we're going to test it there first and see how painfull it is. Thanks again!