ADSM-L

Re: ADSM versus Arcserve and Backup Exec

1998-09-20 18:37:31
Subject: Re: ADSM versus Arcserve and Backup Exec
From: Peter Gathercole <peter.gathercole AT VIRGIN DOT NET>
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 23:37:31 +0100
I totally agree regarding IBM support. I used to work in the AIX support
Centre in the UK (where ADSM support for AIX came from - this is unique to
the UK) for six years, and the common complaint that I had regarding the
skill levels is that it was all gained from training courses and the
manuals, and not from experience (and not just with ADSM!)

In fact, almost all of the support reps. has *NO* system administration
experience at all. This is not a slight on the people themselves, but the
IBM management that expects that all 'Level One' support can be run by
people with little experience (the unkind internal name for such people are
RETAIN monkeys - RETAIN being the IBM Problem reporting system). I guess it
is all a matter of money...

Peter Gathercole
Open Systems Consultant

Dan Kronstadt wrote:

> Sorry, Richard - that answer is too forgiving. Your example of helping
> someone might even have been referring to me. But:
>
> a) it should not be that HARD to get adequate performance. How many
> messages have you seen debating "small file aggregation?" Thats not an
> option - its a result of careful tweaking thats poorly documented. And
> its not clear it can fix files already backed up - which represents
> MILLIONS of files at my shop alone.
>
> b) I have still heard very few people state adequate restore times.
> Everyone talks about backups. The first decent stated times I have
> seen here are 2000kb/s from a gentleman at Nestle's - thats 7 gig per
> hour - if he means restores as well as backups. That at least gives me
> some hope that it will work if I invest the money. Of course, we get
> double that on restores of large Oracle databases thru the SP2 switch
> ...
>
> c) we have been on the phone with IBM *many* times, and mostly get
> people who read the manual with us. Or people who know the server but
> not the client code.Or who know Unix but not Netware or MVS.
>
> ---Richard Sims <rbs AT BU DOT EDU> wrote:
> >
> > >What is most interesting about this topic is that there has yet to
> be a
> > >reply from an IBM representative.
> > >This is a common problem to which IBM has yet to offer a satisfactory
> > >resolution.
> >
> > >ADSM restores are extremely slow when recovering a large number of
> small
> > >files. This problem is particularly bad with Novell clients but is
> also true
> > >for NT and UNIX. As this problem usually becomes apparent under the
> most
> > >difficult circumstances; a disaster recovery, it is particularly
> worrying.
> >
> > Well, IBM is hearing the complaints, but they would be able to better
> > appreciate the problems some customers are having if specifics were
> provided
> > as to just what the topology is, what PTF levels are involved, and
> what
> > options are being used.  That is, just saying that restorals are
> slow is not
> > all that helpful.
> >
> > For example... I recently helped a site which popped up on another
> list,
> > complaining similarly about slow restoral times.  They had an MVS
> server and
> > Novell clients, both running ADSM V.3 code.  They had reasonably
> expected that
> > by default that options like Small File Aggregation were active.
> But not.
> > And they had not tried No Query Restore, which is particularly
> beneficial in
> > the presence of large numbers of files.  They tried these and
> reported that
> > restoral times were "dramatically improved".
> >
> > File system topology and client system speed also play large roles
> in the
> > restoral rates you will see, plus network configuration, buffer
> sizes, etc.
> > Obviously, you have to take many factors into consideration, based
> upon the
> > particulars of your site, and then try controlled experiments as you
> change
> > variables.  It's all worth doing, and at a minimum will give you
> both a sense
> > of control and a basis for measuring the effect of new options and
> hardware as
> > they become available.  Appreciate how much it frustrates IBM
> developers when
> > customers complain that ADSM is slow, but it turns out that
> customers have not
> > taken advantage of features which the developers went to great pains
> to
> > introduce to improve performance.
> >
> >      Richard Sims, Boston University OIT
> >
>
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