ADSM-L

Re: TSM-HSM experiences?

2001-02-22 16:06:46
Subject: Re: TSM-HSM experiences?
From: bbullock <bbullock AT MICRON DOT COM>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 14:07:11 -0700
        Our experience with it was good and bad. Our platform was an AIX
ADSM server and AIX HSM clients. When it worked, it worked pretty well, but
when it broke, it broke bad. In all fairness, we were running in a not
recommend environment: on hosts with many millions of files in an HA
environment.

        We had some problems with reconciliation on the hosts once there was
an HA roll because the HSM logging/tracking files (Sorry, I don't remember
the file names, but they were in the ".SpaceMan" directory, I do remember
that),resided on a local filesystem that did not roll with the HSM
filesystems. Probably a misconfiguration from the beginning on our end.

        Eventually, it came down to the fact that disks had become so cheap,
that instead of the overhead and administration of HSM, we would just keep
it all the data local on disks. On the bright side, when we eventually
restored all the HSM files to another host, only 60 of the 17,000,000 files
came up missing. Sure, it was 60 files, but as a percentage of total files,
we thought it was pretty good.

        I think the product has a place on clients with fewer number of
files and are non-HAed. Just my 2-cents.

Ben Bullock
UNIX Systems Manager


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Per Ekman [mailto:pek AT PDC.KTH DOT SE]
> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 3:44 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: TSM-HSM experiences?
>
>
> Hello,
>
> We've been evaluating and trying to implement a HSM service with the
> TSM-HSM client at our site. We use the 4.1 HSM client for AIX and run
> the 3.7.2 TSM server (also on AIX). Our experience so far is not very
> favourable. Compared to our current DMF HSM system TSM is an
> administrative nightmare, the HSM functionality in particular feels
> like something someone hacked together for fun and was suddenly turned
> into a product.
>
> So I'm wondering what experiences others have with TSM-HSM, good or
> bad.  I'm particularily interested in how much data is stored, what
> the usage patterns look like, how things are set up (backups for
> instance) and how much administration is needed.
>
> I know there are issues with dsmreconcile for filesystems with many
> files. Apart from that there are some bugs (filesystems filling up to
> the extent that migration is prevented, dsm* commands not following
> symlinks) some worrying omissions (serious contortions appear to be
> necessary to get good meta-data backups) and a generally strange and
> overly-complex design are my main concerns at this point.
>
> /Per
>
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