Using DRM with Archive Storage Pools

[pstephen]

We are using DRM to manage the off-site vaulting of our Copy Storage Pools.

Now we want to begin to use Archiving to do full backups of some servers and databases and retain the backups for specific retention periods.

What I would like to do is migrate the Disk ARCHIVEPOOL to a Sequential Tape ARCHIVEPOOL and checkout the Tape Archivepool volumes for off-site disaster recovery. I would like DRM to manage the checkout and off-site rotation of these Tape Archivepool volumes.



I know I could make a Backup copy pool of my Tape Archive Pool and use DRM to manage the Archive Copypool volumes, but this would involve a lot of tape to tape copys that I do not want to do. The only reason for making these Archive backups is to take them off-site for DR, so why should I waste all the time (and expensive tape cartridges) to make a backup copypool of my Archive tape pool? I realize I would not have the Archives on-site if I needed to restore, but my plan is to do most (if not all) restores from the Incremental backups which do remain in my tape library. So the Archives are only used in a disaster, so it makes sense for DRM to manage them.



Is there a way to add my Primary Sequential Access Tape Archive pool to DRM?

Thanks for any information or guidance you can provide...

 

[n9kws]

Couple of notes about Archive Backups, and DRM procedures:



1) Use a specific set of tapes for your archive backups, DO NOT MIX incremental and archive backups onto the same times. That would REALLY screw up your scratch tape return processing.



2) Archive backups are an all or nothing affair, which means that Archive cannot do single file restores, only whole filespace restores. FOr single file restores you must still do incremental backups.



3) Go ahead and create the seperate storage pools for archives, then either start doing archive backups to these pools. And/or you could use your tapepool to create archive backups for your important servers ( this is only available in the latest versions of TSM server).



4) DRM should manage thes tape just fine, just make sure your retension time is long enough.



5) Perform a 'q drmstatus' and make sure all your primary pools are in the 'Primary Storage Pools' field, and all your copy pools are in the 'Copy pools' field. Once this is done DRM will manage these pools.

 

[pstephen]

Thanks for the information. That certainly helps. I can see where I can define my primary Archive Storage pool with DRM, and thanks for the pointers on keeping the Archive and incremental storage pools separate. These Archives that I want to keep are specifically for disaster recovery, so it would be an ALL or nothing restore from these tapes.



The confusion that I still have is that I assume that the MOVE DRMEDIA command would be used to check out all the tape volumes that are in the storage pools that I define to DRM. However, when I read about the MOVE DRMEDIA command in the Administrative Reference Manual, all it talks about is DB backup volumes and Copy Storage Pool volumes. So when I issue the MOVE DRMEDIA command with Remove=YES to checkout tapes to move to off-site, WILL the PRIMARY ARCHIVE TAPEs that are in the library be checked out???



The Refernece manual is not at all clear on this (is anyone supprised?).

 

[n9kws]

I think the answer your looking for, is that for every primary storage pool you will need to do a backup stg pool process in order to create volumes for offsite storage. In your case, in addition to the doing a backup stg pool for your primary copy pool, also do one for the archive pool. The copy are the things to take offsite.



Let us know if you have more questions......

 

[pstephen]

Thank you very much. That is not the answer I had hoped for, but I kind of thought that it would be the answer.



Our 3584 LTO Library only has two drives , so backing up the ARCHIVE Storage Pool will use a lot of expensive tape cartridges and a lot of tape drive time, which will serve no useful purpose since I want to take the primary copies of the Archives off-site anyway. With only two drives, we do not have the time to backup the Primary Archive pools as well as the Primary Backup pools.



I think TSM development should fix this so that DRM can include Primary Storage pool volumes in the off-site rotation. I know that TSM adminstrators are doing this through custom scrips, but they are not using DRM to do it.



But thank you very much for the response. It is very helpful to know how we need to proceed now. I am going to write some custom scripts to identify, update and check out the Primary Archive Storage Pool Volumes. Anyone have any examples of checkout scripts??



Thanks again

 

[fbailey19]

<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>Thanks for the information. That certainly helps. I can see where I can define my primary Archive Storage pool with DRM, and thanks for the pointers on keeping the Archive and incremental storage pools separate. These Archives that I want to keep are specifically for disaster recovery, so it would be an ALL or nothing restore from these tapes.



The confusion that I still have is that I assume that the MOVE DRMEDIA command would be used to check out all the tape volumes that are in the storage pools that I define to DRM. However, when I read about the MOVE DRMEDIA command in the Administrative Reference Manual, all it talks about is DB backup volumes and Copy Storage Pool volumes. So when I issue the MOVE DRMEDIA command with Remove=YES to checkout tapes to move to off-site, WILL the PRIMARY ARCHIVE TAPEs that are in the library be checked out???



The Refernece manual is not at all clear on this (is anyone supprised?).</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>



As far as I know the primary storage pools can not move its media to a vault status using DRM. What you can do is if you have the disk space have a archive_disk_pool and define an archive copypool to that archive_diskpool. Eleanate the Primary tape pool.



If you do not have disk pool space to do this then I suggest writing a Script that will check out the tapes and update them to a vault status. Make sure that the status is in mountable first. DRM will not move primary storage pool tapes so you need some kind of external media manager or database to track the tapes you can use the volume history file to help with the tracking as well.



I hope this info helps. you can e-mail me at [email protected] and I can assist you with that script.





[email protected]

 

[pstephen]

Thanks again for the information. This has been a learning experience for me.

At this point I have given in to the DRMEDIA limitations, and decided to create a COPY Storage pool for my ARCHIVE TAPE POOL. So now my question is.. How do I implement this tape rotation.

What I want to do is: After I run the COPY Storage Pools each day I will issue these DRM Commands.

MOVe DRMedia * WHERESTate=MOuntable REMove=Untileefull TOState=VAULT

This should eject all my COPYPOOL Tapes and change the state to VAULT

Since we have a small shop, I do not need to go through the COURIER state.



Then when the data on the tape expires WHAT changes the Volume State from VAULT to VAULTRETREIVE ?? The MOVE DRMEDIA command says it cannot make this change.

The Admin Guide and Admin Reference seem to silient on this.



Likewise, when the Volumes are back on-site and I want to Check them in I would think the MOVE DRMEDIA command would change the State from VAULTRETREIVE to MOUNTABLE AND generate the required CHECKIN LIBVOL commands using the CMD= parameter. However, again the manuals say that MOVE DRMEDIA cannot change a State from VAULTRETRIEVE to MOUNTABLE, and again (as usual) the Admin Guide and Admin Reference seem to silient on how to perform this routine task.



I may be missing some key point on how DRM works, but I cannot find it in the manuals. (Can you tell that I am down on the quality and usefullness of the TSM manuals).



Anyway... Thanks to everyone in the TSM community who can provide some guidance!!!.

 

[n9kws]

In one of my origanal posting I mentioned putting the pools in the proper places under the 'q drmstatus' command. That is the magic which changes offsite tape volumes to vault retrieve.



Once the tapes are in vault retrieve, you must make them onsite retrieve, before they can be checked into the library as scratch. To review, tape volumes go through a set of states that can only be done in order, (ie you cannot go backward on the list). The proper order is as follows:



1) Mountable

2) Not-Mountable

3) Courier

4) Remote (virtual volumes only)

5) Vault

6) Vault Retrieve

7) Courier retrieve

onsite retrieve



At which point they are scratch tapes and can be checked into the libary as such.



Basically, the rotation for archive tapes works the same way it does with regular incremental backups. It's just that archives typically have a much longer retention period.