Queries to the crowd:
1. ADSM doesn't appear to be good at central logging of events, etc., nor at
centralized management of servers.  We are building an environment of  3 SP2
towers, 4 or 5 eight-way R30 systems, and various Sun and HP systems to support
SAP and related products.  To minimize our backup time, we have to run multiple
servers and 3494 robotic systems.  A BIG issue is the management of the backups
for this environment as a whole, and not as many separate ADSM server
environments.  IBM folks tell me that this will be addressed in 1997, but we're
going "live" in July 1996.   We have been looking closely at products from
Software Clearing House (affiliated with Storage Technology) that fulfills this
need, but has serious problems with SAP's approved backup plan.  Does any one
of you have any suggestions or know of any helpful documention that may help us
make ADMS "be all that it can be" in this environment?

2. ADSM seems to be constrained in it's ability to keep up with the input
capacity of 3590 tape systems.  For example, IBM reps have mentioned a rule of
thumb to expect (even with SSA disk drives) about a 3 to 1 throughput
capability of the 3590 over the disk drive during the backup.  Other backup
products claim to overcome this by multiplexing multiple, parallel I/O streams
from multiple disk drives (or tablespaces) to a single tape drive.  Has any of
you any experience with this or comments you'd like to share?

Thanks,
     John Howard