As with most things "It depends" much on your environment.
This is my opinion, your mileage may vary:
DRM does two major things for you in an AIX environment:
1) It automates (mostly) the vaulting process for moving/tracking copy pool
tapes offsite and onsite.
If you have a tape robot and do a lot of tape vaulting (we vault tapes here
daily), you can either:
* a) have a very expensive ADSM administrator do all the checking and
status updates daily for vaulting tapes,
* b) have a very expensive UNIX dude write scripts to automate the
process (and of course maintain them), or
* c) pay for DRM and get the function ready to go out of the box.
2) It generates the "recovery plan" that is a series of scripts and
instructions that tell you how to rebuild your ADSM server in an offsite, DR
environment (which is the first thing you have to do in a disaster situation
you have to get your ADSM server back up at your recovery site, before you
can start using ADSM to recover your applications.)
Now rebuilding your server at a DR site is one of those things that is
perfectly straightforward if you know what to do and how to do it and have
done it. But if you've never done it, it's a complex task and developing
the procedures for doing it is a VERY VERY time-consuming task. Again, this
is something you can certainly spend time doing yourself, or you can pay for
DRM and have the function ready to go.
Now because of the zillions of different ways different sites do budgeting
and procurement, a lot of managers don't take into account what they are
really paying for on a day-to-day basis when it comes to personnel time.
In my opionion, DRM EASILY pays for itself in an AIX environment, compared
to the cost of having skilled persons deveop and maintain these procedures
in house.
On the other hand, most MVS environments I come in contact with have a tape
vaulting function already set up using an existing MVS tape management
system, and already have MVS recovery procedures in place for their DR
sites; in that case, DRM doesn't add much that they don't already have.
So it depends: if you already have procedures in place to handle your tape
vaulting and you are confident you don't need help deveoping procedures to
recover your ADSM server at a DR site, then DRM is not for you.
In response to your other question, setting up these two DRM functions
requires very little work.
************************************************************************
Wanda Prather
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
443-778-8769
wanda_prather AT jhuapl DOT edu
"Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" -
Scott Adams/Dilbert
************************************************************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marita Gonsalves [SMTP:marita_gonsalves AT CARYACADEMY.PVT.K12.NC DOT
> US]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 11:09 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Tivoli - DRM: To buy or not to buy...
>
> Hello all,
> We have made the decision to upgrade from ADSM 2.1 to Tivoli 3.7. We did
> not get DRM with ADSM 2.1 because it wasn't very automated and didn't do
> enough for the $$ they were asking for. I read the blurb at
> http://www.tivoli.com/products/index/disaster_recover_mgr/
> <http://www.tivoli.com/products/index/disaster_recover_mgr/> .
> Unfortunately, that doesn't give me enough information to justify getting
> DRM. Our environment is very small compared to what I've seen on this
> listserv. We backup about 40 GBs of data. Fortunately for us, we've had
> no
> major DR issues in the last 3 years (and I fervently hope it stays that
> way:-)) - just a few minor skirmishes with the database getting corrupt,
> etc. We average about 2 minor restores a week.
> So my question to all you TSM/ADSM gurus are: what
> "cannot-survive-without"
> feature(s) does the new DRM have that would help convince me (and my boss)
> that we should get it? How labor intensive is it to set up? Once set up,
> how much administrator/operator intervention is required to maintain it?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Marita Gonsalves
> Information Services Consultant
> http://web1.caryacademy.pvt.k12.nc.us
> <http://web1.caryacademy.pvt.k12.nc.us/default.htm>
> (919)677-1946 x4555
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