Bill,

See my comments embedded below.

Thanks,

Del

----------------------------------------------------
Del Hoobler
Del Hoobler
IBM Corporation
hoobler AT us.ibm DOT com

"It's a beautiful day.  Don't let it get away."  -- Bono




                    William Boyer
                    <wboyer AT PTD DOT NE       To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT 
EDU
                    T>                   cc:
                    Sent by:             Subject:     Wanted: Experiences with 
TDP Domino and
                    "ADSM: Dist           Transaction Logging
                    Stor Manager"
                    <ADSM-L AT VM DOT MAR
                    IST.EDU>


                    04/11/2001
                    01:39 PM
                    Please respond
                    to "ADSM: Dist
                    Stor Manager"





Our shop is currently running Lotus Notes and for our remote WAN attached
Notes servers we had to go to using the TDP Agent and daily incremental
processing. This was because the amount of data to back up using the B/A
client and *.NSF files was too much to fit in the window and bandwidth. We
are now looking at moving to Domino. Our Notes admins have read some on the
transaction logging and don't like what they read. They say that the
hardware requirements to run logging are too much. Plus the fact that
certain database functions (compact with space reduction...) assign a new
DBIID to the database and the next TDP incremental would actually by
another
full backup since the DBIID has changed.

***
*** Please don't forget that enabling transaction logging
*** has at least three positive functions.  The major one
*** is that it increases the performance of your Domino server.
*** The second one is that it gives you recoverability in case
*** hardware failures, system failures or crashes
*** by providing a mechanism for rollforward or rollback of
*** in-flight transactions occuring at the time of failure.
*** The third one is that when used in conjunction with a
*** product like TDP for Domino, you get the ability to
*** have very granular point-in-time restorability
*** of all databases that are logged.
*** It is correct that when the DBIID changes, a new backup
*** of the database is necessary.
*** As far as compact with space-reduction... we have
*** submitted an official requirement to Lotus Domino to
*** have compact with space-reduction be a logged event
*** such that the DBIID would not have to change.
***

I've been reading the TDP Domino manuals and archives and feel that since
the compactions are scheduled on weekends, this is not that big of an
issue.
We would be doing full backups on weekends anyway. So I need some
ammunition
to convince 'them' that we can still use the TDP Agent and not loose any
functionality.

***
*** A few comments here about TDP for Notes vs. TDP for Domino...
***
*** First, keep in mind that TDP for Notes backs up at the
*** document level. That has good and bad aspects.  The good being
*** that you have restore granularity down to the document level.
*** Bad because each document takes one TSM server object and because
*** backing up or restoring of an entire database with many documents
*** could take a while and cause large TSM Server database extents.
***
*** TDP for Domino works at the database level. It is much, much
*** faster when backing up or restoring an entire database.
*** But in order to restore a single document, you need to restore
*** the database to an alternate name and copy out the document
*** you want. Also, any particular database backup only consists
*** of two TSM server objects instead of a possible thousands
*** with TDP for Notes.
***

Their solution is to create a central Domino server with LOTS of disk and
then replicate the databases back here and use TSM to back up this massive
server.

The main issue is the changing DBIID. THey are concerned that they would
not
be able to recover a database when it could possibly have multiple DBIID's
associated with the same database within TSM.

***
*** That is not correct. You can restore a database even if the
*** DBIID has changed. (as long as you backed it up, of course!)
*** Think of a database with different DBIIDs as different databases.
*** The transaction logger logs changes against databases
*** by their DBIID, not their name. And so, any particular
*** DBIID (database) can be recovered as long as you have a full
*** backup and the transaction log segments.
*** And, TDP for Domino will back up both of these things for you.
***

TIA,
Bill Boyer
"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield." - ??