The information you need to recover you *SM server is contained in two
files: devconfig.out and volhist.out.  These are normally written to the
server installation directory.  If they are not there, you will want to add
a couple of lines to your dsmserv.opt file:

DEVCONFIG  pathtowhereyouwantoputit
VOLUMEHISTORY pathtowhereyouwantoputit

You can have multiple entries for these two options in the file to send the
file to different places.  If you have these two files, recovering your db
is relatively straightforward.  You will definitely want to have at least
one copy off of the server itself.

The VOLUMEHISTORY file has information about how tape (and other) volumes
are consumed within *SM.  This file gets written whenever a volume is added
or deleted (the info is stored in the db too, but as you pointed out that's
not going to do you much good if the db is broken).  Take a look at the file
and you will see entries for your db backup tapes.  That's how you know
which tape *SM used.

The DEVCONFIG file holds information about the library, drive and device
class definitions used by the library that wrote the db backup tape.

During a dsmserv restore db, these two files are used: devconfig to define
the library and drives and volumehistory to determine which tape has the db
backup.

You might try looking at the chapters in the Admin Guide that describe
protecting the server.  There is sufficient functionality within the product
to handle this.  You've got a pretty good start.


Kelly J. Lipp
Storage Solutions Specialists, Inc.
PO Box 51313
Colorado Springs CO 80919
(719)531-5926
Fax: (719)260-5991
www.storsol.com
lipp AT storsol DOT com