Re: HELP with TSM and SAN

Eliza,

TSM v5.1 is now announced so you can re-evaluate the things agains it.
Initial answer from Adolph Kahan was nearly perfect and answered all the
questions.
What for is trying IBM to sell you a SAN? Only for TSM or for some storage
consolidation? Be informed that SAN disk pool would help only if is on
high-end disk array (if IBM is trying to sell SAN this ought to be ESS).
Other arrays will not be able to achieve enough troughput to outperform
SAN-attached 3590E.
You are right that can use W2k for SANergy MDC and AIX being a client.
However I read somewere (sorry, cannot say where, memory refuses to serve
so good) an IBM recommendation to use UNIX MDC for mostly UNIX clients and
Windows MDC for mostly Windows clients.
As from announcement of v5.1 server-free is still not available. I would
be some day but for which clients/ISM for xxx ...
SAN clients would not tie up all your drives. You can set them up to use
only one or two.
The possibility to share disk pool in SAN should work. LAN clients would
have access through the server, SAN clients through their SANergy client
(in TSM v4.2 announcement there was a statement that for SAN-shared disk
through SANergy you need only MgSysLAN licenses!). The remark above still
have place - 3590E is a top performer and would be hard to beat him too
much to be worth SANergy implementation for those 5 high-volume clients.

Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant

P.S. If you continued your discussion off-line as Adolph suggested I would
be very interested see some results. Feel free to contact me off the list.

Zlatko





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Subject:        Re: HELP with TSM and SAN

No, we don't have a SAN now.  IBM is trying to sell us one.  I am just
looking
into ways to incorporate it into our existing configuration before making
a recommendation to my boss.  Our Exchange database is about
40G.  It is being backed up directly to tapes through the LAN to FC 3590E
tape drives in a 3494 and runs for 2 hours.

Eliza

>
> I guess I do not understand why you made the 5 SAN clients SAN if you
are
> not going to go directly to tape.  How big is the Exchange Server.  2
Hours
> sounds like a long time for SAN attached 3590s.
>
> The only possible way to do this may be with SANErgy, but I cannot think
of
> way to share the disk pool between the SAN and LAN clients right now.
>
> My recommendation for this type of configuration is to use Gigabit in
the
> TSM Server and the SAN clients that you have.  It is cheaper and does
> exactly what you are trying to do.  I guess the machines/disk you have
are
> just too slow to drive the tape drives to effectively use SAN.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eliza Lau [mailto:lau AT VTCAT.CC.VT DOT EDU]
> Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 11:40 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: HELP with TSM and SAN
>
>
> What I am trying to achieve is to have all SAN and non-SAN clients
backup to
> a disk storage pool that is on the SAN and then migrate to the
SAN-attahced
> 3494.  We will have 5 SAN clients and 300+ non-SAN clients with only 6
tape
> drives.  I don't want the 5 SAN clients to tie up the tape drives with
> LAN-free backup during the backup window.  The Exchange backup alone
takes 2
> hours. Is this doable with a AIX TSM server?
>
> Eliza
>
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf
> > Of Eliza Lau
> > Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 9:46 AM
> > To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> > Subject: Re: HELP with TSM and SAN
> >
> > >
> > > 1. LAN FREE B/A is available with the Storage Agent in TSM 4.2
> > >
> > > 2. SANergy MDC cannot run on AIX - WIN2k, WINNT, Solaris, Red Hat
> > > and SuSe.
> >
> > Thanks Adolph.  This clears things up.  But there is indeed a SANergy
> > client for AIX.  The Tivoli rep just quoted me a license.  It requires
> > 130 points.  Then why can't I run the SANergy MDC on a W2K box to
> > export the disk storage pool to the AIX SANergy client where the TSM
> > server is.  From this disk storage pool backup files will migrate to
> > the 3494.  The W2K box and the AIX TSM server will both be on the SAN.
> >
> > Eliza, why would you want to do this? What are you trying to achieve?
> > Maybe we should take this off the list server. My email is
> > akahan AT ica DOT net.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > 3. The non-SAN clients can backup to a SAN or non-SAN disk pool. The
> > TSM
> > > server writes to the disk pool, the client does not. If the TSM
> > > server has access to the SAN then I would have all of the 3494 tapes
> > > attached to the SAN. Partitioning the library is not required. All
> > > of my
> > clients
> > > with 3494 libraries and SAN, have all of the drives on the SAN.
> > >
> > > 4. Server Free backup will require the use of a San Data Gateway -
> > this
> > > is a hardware box- The current box available from IBM is a 2108-G07.
> > >
> > > 5. Server Free means both the TSM Server and the Client are not
> > > doing i/o to the disk or tape for backup purposes. This comes with
> > > TSM 5.1. Initially this will be very limited in the clients that are
> > > supported and the TSM server platform.
> > >
> > > Adolph Kahan
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Eliza Lau
> > Virginia Tech Computing Center
> > 1700 Pratt Drive
> > Blacksburg, VA 24060
> > lau AT vt DOT edu
> >
>