This Frequently Asked Question list for the ADSM-L mailing list is posted on
the first day of each month. It was created to cut down on the number of
questions that are repeated regularly in the ADSM-L mailing list from
vm.marist.edu. I would be grateful for any requests to include additional
material. (Please send them directly to me, rather than to the list.)
updated
10/01/2002============================================================
* Questions marked with * are new or improved since the last posting
QUESTIONS
01. About the list itself
01-01. How do I subscribe to ADSM-L?
01-02. How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
01-03. Why don't I see the questions I post to ADSM-L?
01-04. How can I see the questions I post to ADSM-L?
01-05. Who decides what questions go on ADSM-L?
01-06. *Is there a digest or archive of ADSM-L?
01-07. How do I get more information about ADSM-L?
01-08. Does IBM/Tivoli participate in ADSM-L?
02. Types of questions asked
02-01. What subjects are covered in this list?
02-02. What kinds of questions can be asked?
02-03. What kinds of questions can I expect answers to?
02-04. What levels of netiquette are expected?
02-05. What's the first thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
02-06. What's the second thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
02-07. What's the third thing to do when I still have a question about TSM?
02-08. *What's the fourth thing to do when I STILL have a question about
TSM?
02-09. What's the fifth thing to do when I *STILL* have a question about
TSM?
02-10. What are those "out of office" messages I keep seeing in the list?
02-11. What's the single best thing I can do to improve the list?
02-12. *Why don't I get answers to my "I need comparisons between TSM and
<brandX> backup software" questions?
02-13. *What kinds of things shouldn't I post on ADSM-L?
02-14. *Is there some sort of acronym list?
03. Available ADSM/TSM/ITSM resources
03-01. What FAQs are already out there?
03-02. *What other sources of help can I find?
03-03. How do I get "official" TSM support?
04. Quick facts about questions asked on ADSM-L
04-01. Is it called ADSM, or TSM, or ITSM? What's the deal here?
04-02. What are backupsets? How can I use them?
04-03. How does TSM do full/incremental/differential backups, just like
my old backup software <fillintheblank> used to?
04-04. How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
04-05. *How do I do mailbox-level restores of Exchange using the Tivoli Data
Protection Agent for Exchange?
04-06. How do I force TSM to do a full backup of a client?
04-07. *Where can I download the latest version of TSM/TDP?
04-08. *What's the very first thing I do after TSM is delivered to me?
04-09. I'm getting message ANRXXXXX from the TSM server. What does it mean?
04-10. I'm getting message ANSXXXXX from the TSM client. What does it mean?
04-11. *My large-scale restores are slow. How can I speed them up?
04-12. *How do I back up normally open files, like database files?
04-13. What's all this about TSM and SQL select statements?
04-14. My boss wants disaster recovery procedures. What's the best way
to do it?
04-15. How do I get TSM to report problems to me?
04-16. Why does version X of TSM have this bad bug in it?
04-17. How come my tape reclamation runs so slowly?
04-18. I keep getting these "server out of license compliance" messages.
Why?
04-19. *My scheduled backups fail (or are incomplete), but my manual ones
work fine. Why?
04-20. While backleveling my TSM client from 4.2.1 to 4.1.3, I get a
"downlevel" message. Why?
04-21. *Why do I get an "ANR1440I All drives in use. Process being preempted
by higher priority operation" message when my storage pool backup
fails?
04-22. *I've deleted all data from a tape volume, but it hasn't come back as
a scratch tape. Why?
04-23. *What is this ANR9999D error message. I don't understand it.
04-24. *I'm upgrading my TSM server from version X.X to version Y.Y.
Any pitfalls?
ANSWERS
01-01. How do I subscribe to ADSM-L?
Send an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message consisting only of the line SUBSCRIBE ADSM-L.
01-02. How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
Send an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message consisting only of the line UNSUBSCRIBE ADSM-L. Do NOT try to
unsubscribe by sending email to ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU. All that does is
annoy
the list members, and it doesn't get you off the list.
01-03. Why don't I see the questions I post to ADSM-L?
That's the normal behavior of ADSM-L.
01-04. How can I see the questions I post to ADSM-L?
If you want to see your own questions, send an email to
LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a message that
consists
only of the line SET ADSM-L REPRO.
01-05. Who decides what questions go on ADSM-L?
The list members. There appears to be no active moderation of the list. (No,
that's not a license to abuse the list. Complaints from the list members do
get listened to by the list administrator.)
01-06. Is there a digest or archive of ADSM-L?
Indeed. There is an indexed version of the mailing list at http://adsm.org.
(Interestingly enough, the adsm.org domain is owned by the same people who
own tucows.com, and they've given it a real facelift lately.)
01-07. How do I get more information about ADSM-L?
Send an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message consisting only of the line INFO. This will cause an email to be
returned to you with a list of documents available about VM.MARIST.INFO and
instructions on how to get them.
01-08. Does IBM/Tivoli participate in or post to ADSM-L?
>From Andy Raibeck, from the TSM client development group: "This list server
is owned and operated by Marist College, and is not in any way affiliated
with IBM. While some IBMers do participate on ADSM-L, they do so on an
unofficial, voluntary basis, and thus are not *required* to answer your
questions. If you require an answer from IBM, or if your situation is of an
urgent nature, then you should (also) go through IBM's official support
channels for assistance."
02-01. What subjects are covered in this list?
Officially, only questions concerning the installation, configuration, care,
and feeding of ADSM/TSM/ITSM should appear. However, since backup and
recovery systems cover a wide range of IT and business issues, there have
been discussions about disaster recovery, tape and other storage systems,
and other Tivoli products (such as Storage Network Management and Decision
Support). Keep it centered around TSM, and no one fusses much.
02-02. What kinds of questions can be asked?
You can ask pretty much any TSM-related question you care to. There's no
guarantee you'll get an answer, though. Reposting an already-asked question
(because of initial lack of response) will sometimes get you an answer, but
often it'll get you nothing.
02-03. What kinds of questions can I expect answers to?
As with any other mailing list, the questions that lend themselves to short,
concise answers are the ones most likely to get answered. As an example,
you're much more likely to get an answer to "Does my new tape library, model
ZYX-666 made by Spelvin Corporation, work with TSM version 4.2?" than "I
just got TSM. How do I use it?" Keep your questions focused and narrow in
scope. See answers to questions 02-05, 02-06, and 02-07.
02-04. What levels of netiquette are expected?
The standard civility is expected. If you're unsure of netiquette rules, go
to http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html and
http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/net/index.html.
02-05. What's the first thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
Read this FAQ, particular section 4.
02-06. What's the second thing to do when I have a question about TSM?
The second thing to do is to go to Richard Sims' exhaustive TSM FAQ at
http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts. More about online FAQs in answer
03-01.
02-07. What's the third thing to do when I still have a question about TSM?
The third thing to do is to look for similar questions in the ADSM-L
archives found at http://adsm.org. Chances are that your question has been
asked before by someone else. Using the proper keywords to find relevant
responses is a bit of an art, but PLEASE look there.
02-08. *What's the fourth thing to do when I STILL have a question about
TSM?
Research the Administrator's Guide, the Administrator's Reference, the
client guides, or the relevant IBM Redbooks. Yeah, I know, it's not easy
reading. Search the .PDF version of the book (see answer 03-02 for the
download locations); the answer's probably in there somewhere.
(last one, I promise)
02-09. What's the fifth thing to do when I *STILL* have a question about
TSM?
Post it to the list, and always include all key information. Such
information should always include server level (found in the top banner of
the login administrative web page), client level (from the Help-->About TSM
splash screen in the client GUI), TSM server OS and OS level (include
service pack/maintenance level data), an *exact* description of the problem,
an extract of the server activity log, and the error messages verbatim. Cut
and paste text from messages; this makes typos much less likely. Confusion
reigns when you commit a typo in your question; you'll get a flood of
"you've misspelled your command" answers, which is probably not what you're
looking for.
02-10. What are those "out of office" messages I keep seeing in the list?
Some email clients have a clever little feature that can be set to tell
those who send email to a recipient that the recipient will be out (and will
thus not be immediately responsive). Unfortunately, some people don't know
how to configure these clients not to send such messages to mailing lists.
What is most annoying about these messages is that they can appear in
multiple languages, which makes filtering them out a frustrating task.
02-11. What's the single best thing everyone can do to improve the list?
Trim your replies! Trim back what you quote from the previous poster to the
essential information only. Get rid of the greetings, the .sigs, and the
chatty stuff. (This measure alone could cut half the length of a download.)
02-12. *Why don't I get answers to my "I need comparisons between TSM and
<brandX> backup software" questions?
While there is an occasional response to these questions, they are ignored
for the most part. The ADSM-L list concerns itself with TSM only. Most of
the list members don't know <brandX> well enough to do good comparisons; a
lot of us don't care. There is one clue, however, to what backup application
to use: we see *lots* of sites/customers moving from <brandX> to TSM; we see
very few of them moving in the other direction.
02-13. *What kinds of things shouldn't I post on ADSM-L?
a. Questions about subjects other than TSM or TSM-related issues. There are
lots of mailing lists out there; start looking for the one you need at
http://www.lsoft.com/catalist.html.
b. Advertisements. (Testimonials are okay as long as they're disinterested
testimonials. IOW, if you work for spammo.com, don't sing the praises of
Spammo.)
c. "Send it to me, too!" responses. (There should be a special level of Hell
for people who do this.) For pity's sake, if you want something from
someone, email them directly. Those who post "me, too!"s to this list--and
there were a bunch of you who did this in September 2002--the original
poster even *asked* you to email him directly. Please review the answer
02-04 above.
02-14. *Is there some sort of acronym list?
ADSM = Adstar Distributed Storage Manager
DR = disaster recovery
ITSM = IBM/Tivoli Storage Manager
TDP = Tivoli Data Protection
TSM = Tivoli Storage Manager
03-01. What FAQs are already out there?
There are a few (including this one), but the brightest star in this
firmament is Richard Sims' page at http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts.
It is organized by keyword, it is *exhaustive*, and it is updated
frequently. (Say, Richard, when are we going to see your shining face back
posting to the list?)
03-02. *What sources of help can I find?
There are several sources of valuable help for TSM problems.
1) The ADSM-L mailing list is a good resource; however, like most mailing
lists, you must separate the answers from those who know from the answers of
those who don't. The best way to do that is to read it frequently; you'll
soon learn who hits the nail with the hammer most often.
2) The same caution extends the ADSM-L online archive at http://adsm.org.
This archive is indexed and searchable, although personal experience shows
that the search function could use some work. It has gotten a recent lift,
and is much more attractive.
3) Tivoli maintains extensive official documentation on all TSM products.
You can find Tivoli documents, in PDF and HTML format, at
http://www.tivoli.com/support/public/Prodman/public_manuals/td/TD_PROD_LIST.
html.
4) If it's a server command you're having problems with, run the command
with the word "help" (without the quotes) in front of it (such as HELP UPD
STGPOOL) at the administrative command-line. TSM will echo back a help file
with syntax, flag definitions, examples, and similar command lists. Neat!
5) Tivoli technical support, although not as fast to respond as in past
times, is still one of the best technical support lines in the market today.
The telephone number is 800.848.6548. You will need your Tivoli customer
number, which you should have gotten when you purchased TSM, and the name of
the 'official' contact person designated when the order for TSM was placed;
without both, they will not be able to help you.
6) IBM maintains a documentation system they call Redbooks. Redbooks are
rather like O'Reilly's "missing manuals"; they contain information that
doesn't make it into the standard software manuals. There is a lot of good
TSM information in some of them. You can find redbooks in .PDF format at
http://redbooks.ibm.com. WARNING: Redbook information is not "official" IBM
documentation, and official support is not predicated upon them.
03-03. How do I get "official" TSM support?
As I understand it, those who buy TSM receive support from Tivoli for one
year from date of purchase. After that, support must be purchased. Contact
your Tivoli reseller for details.
04-01. Is it called ADSM, or TSM, or ITSM? What's the deal here?
[I received a *lot* of feedback from version 0.9 of this FAQ about this
question. I reluctantly decided to cut most of the history out of this
answer; including all the quality information I got would have made this
answer much longer than the question itself really merits, and it's not a
question asked all *that* often.]
The backup and restore software package we refer to today as Tivoli Storage
Manager was owned by IBM and known as Adstar Distributed Storage Manager
(ADSM). Later, Tivoli took ownership and changed the name to Tivoli Storage
Manager. The current official name of the software is IBM/Tivoli Storage
Manager (ITSM).
04-02. What are backupsets? How can I use them?
Backupsets are created from the latest (active) version of each file on a
client's system. These files are copied from data already stored in TSM
storage (disk, tape, or other media) to a single "file". Thus it is not
necessary to do an extra backup across your network to create a backupset.
Backupsets cannot be browsed like backups and archives; you can, however,
use wildcards to restore files. You can look at the contents of a backupset,
provided you know the backupset's name, from Q BACKUPSETCONTENTS.
04-03. How does TSM do full/incremental/differential backups, just like
my old backup software <brandX> used to?
You're not using your old backup software anymore. TSM uses a backup/restore
philosophy unlike any other backup software. Once the initial full backup of
a client is finished, TSM then only backs up files that are new or have
modified. This sort of backup used to be called "incrementals forever", but
is more accurately described as "progressive backups". There is not a way to
perform differentials; you don't need them anymore, anyway.
04-04. How do I unsubscribe to ADSM-L?
(This question is answered twice in this FAQ because it needs to be.) Send
an email to LISTSERV AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU with a blank subject line and a
message
consisting only of the line UNSUBSCRIBE ADSM-L. Do NOT try to unsubscribe by
sending email to ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU. All that does is annoy the list
members, and it doesn't get you off the list.
04-05. *How can I do mailbox-level restores of Exchange using the Tivoli
Data
Protection Agent for Exchange?
Not in a straightforward way. Microsoft does not (currently) support
mailbox-level Exchange backups or restores. In a nutshell, the best way to
do mailbox-level restores is to restore the entire Exchange information
store and directory to a staging Exchange server, and then use the Exchange
administative software to move the desired mailbox from the staging server
to the production server.
UPDATE: There apparently is an upcoming service pack for Exchange that
*will* allow TSM to do mailbox-level restores in a manner supported by
Microsoft. We should see more details in the upcoming months; for now, the
standing response is still correct.
04-06. How do I force TSM to do a full backup of a client?
>From the command line, run
dsmc selective <drive_letter>:\* -subdir=yes (Windows)
dsmc selective <volume_name>:\* -subdir=yes (NetWare)
dsmc selective /<filespace>/* -subdir=yes (UNIX)
to backup the entire drive/filespace. From the GUI, press the BACKUP button,
select the desired data to backup, use the pulldown menu to change
"Incremental (complete)" to "Always backup", and press the "Backup" button.
The selective backup only does one filespace at a time.
04-07. *Where can I download the latest version of TSM/TDP?
The latest full versions of TSM backup/archive clients are available from
the ftp site
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/maintenance.
You cannot download the (required) base level of TSM server code, but you
*can* download the latest version of the server patches at the above ftp
address. Similarly, you cannot download the (required) base code for Tivoli
Data Protection software, but you can download patches for the base code at
the above ftp address. Latest base code for the TSM server and TDP agent are
available from your Tivoli reseller.
There is a mirror of the above address at ftp://ftp.rz.unikarlsruhe.de/ (for
our European compatriots).
04-08. *What's the very first thing I should do when I start using TSM?
Read the Administrator's Guide and the QuickStart manual, cover to cover,
and take notes. It's not exactly scintillating prose, but stay with it.
You'll be much happier later.
04-09. I'm getting message ANRXXXXX from the TSM server. What does it mean?
>From the administrative command line, type
help anrxxxxx
and read the message. You can also look up the message in the TSM Messages
manual, and there is an online version of this service at www.tivoli.com
04-10. I'm getting message ANSXXXXX from the TSM client. What does it mean?
>From the client command line, type
help
Navigate through the menus to find information about the message. You can
also look up the message in the TSM Messages manual, and there is an online
version of this service at www.tivoli.com.
04-11. *My large-scale restores are slow. How can I speed them up?
1) Use collocated tape pools. (Just the primary pools, not the copy pools.)
2) Use a disk-based directory management class.
3) Upgrade to TSM server 5.1 to take advantage of multithreaded restores and
MOVE NODEDATA.
4) Check your network settings to make sure that you're getting maximum
bandwidth.
5) Run a restore session for each filespace, rather than one session for the
entire node.
Please note that numbers 1-3 are of no use once the need for a large-scale
restore comes up. They are preventative measures that must have been in
place for some time prior to the need to restore. See Rule #1 in answer
04-14.
04-12. *How can I back up files that are normally open, like database files?
You can use the Tivoli Data Protection agents; TDP supports most major
database formats. You can also use an open file agent, like St. Bernard's
Open File Manager. You can use other applications, like BMC's SQL-BACKTRACK,
that allows TSM to handle most database file formats. You can temporary
close the application (or instance) that uses the file, back up the
resultant cold flat file, and then restart the application (or instance).
Some database engines allow a "dump" of data to a flat file, which can then
be backed up as a normal file. Each option has its advantages and
disadvantages.
04-13. What's all this about TSM and SQL select statements?
You can write SQL select statements to query the TSM database. There are
some limitations (joins are only partially supported). You can get started
by running HELP SELECT
from the administrative command line. You can do some pretty neat things
with SQL statements; browse the mailing list for a plethora of examples, or
look at the scripts.smp file in your server subdirectory.
04-14. My boss wants disaster recovery procedures. What's the best way
to do it?
Answering this would take pages and pages, and much of it depends on your
resources and your business needs. TSM is a fine tool to include in your
disaster recovery planning, but setting it up properly for DR is a
non-trivial task. If you don't want to do the proper research (or don't have
the time), contract or hire a professional who knows how.
Rule #1 of disaster recovery: Practice it before you have to.
Rule #2 of disaster recovery: Prior planning prevents pretty poor
performance.
04-15. How do I get TSM to generate daily reports for me?
With some effort. TSM has no native reporting tools included. You can use
OS-level scripting (tough with Windows unless you use Perl), you can use
applications like Tivoli Decision Support or Servergraph, or you can use an
SNMP-aware monitoring system. (The MIBs for TSM are in the file
adsmserv.mib, found in the server subdirectory.)
04-16. Why does version X of TSM have this bad bug in it?
Yes, there are bugs in TSM. It is a large, complex, evolving piece of
software that has to work and play well with literally millions of different
combinations of client hardware and software; the big surprise is that there
are not *more* bugs in it. If you run across a bug (or a perceived bug),
post it to the list, or scan the APAR list on www.ibm.com to see if it's
already been reported. To get rid of the bug, upgrade TSM to a level where
the bug has been fixed.
04-17. Why does my tape reclamation runs so slowly?
If tape space reclamation tries to move files for which copies exist in a
cached diskpool, the algorithm that TSM uses for file access will pull the
file from the diskpool rather than the tapepool. This situation causes
reclamation to run *very* *slowly*. Tivoli claims that a fix of this would
require a massive rewrite of code. The workaround is to turn off caching for
the diskpool.
04-18. I keep getting these "server out of license compliance" messages.
Why?
You are using more of a particular resource than your TSM server is licensed
to handle. Run a QUERY LICENSE to get a list of what you're licensed for and
what you're actually using. TSM runs on an honor system; it will continue to
run even if you're out of compliance. Be a good doo-bee; purchase those
extra licenses from Tivoli and look at the HELP REG LIC response from the
administrative command line (or the Administrator's Reference).
04-19. *My scheduled backups fail (or are incomplete), but my manual ones
work fine. Why?
This almost always occurs in Windows servers, and it's always a Windows
permissions problem. By default, the TSM scheduler runs as a service with
System account privileges. By default all Windows files are read/writeable
by System; however, there are a few Windows admins (and applications) out
there who remove System privileges from files. (For what reasons, I cannot
imagine.) When a manual backup is run, it uses the permissions of the
account of the person who is logged on, not the System account. (You can't
log on as System, as it's a non-interactive account.) The real solution is
reset all files to have System read/write privileges. If that's not
possible, you need to alter the scheduler service so as to use a logon ID
with privileges that have access to all files that you want backed up.
Remember that if that logon ID changes passwords, you're going to have to
update the service properties to reflect the new password.
04-20. While backleveling my TSM client from 4.2.1 to 4.1.3, I get a
"downlevel" message. Why?
When a node backs up data to a TSM server, the level of TSM client being
used is recorded as part of the node definition. When you backlevel the
client (say, from 4.2.1 to 4.1.3), TSM won't allow it to happen because it
thinks you should be using a more recent version of the client, which may
have features not available in the older version. The fix is to call TSM
support and have them step you through the process to fix the node
definition. This fix is potentially dangerous to the database, which is why
it's not distributed on the mailing list (or described here).
04-21. *Why do I get an "ANR1440I All drives in use. Process being preempted
by higher priority operation" message when my tape operation stops
running?
TSM has an internal list of priorities it keeps for various administrative
events and client operations. Restores are at the top of the priority list
(obviously), client backups are at the bottom, and all the other fall in
between. For details, look in the Administrator's Guide under "Preemption of
Client or Server Operations".
04-22. *I've deleted all data from a tape volume, but it hasn't come back as
a scratch tape. Why?
Check the DELAY PERIOD FOR VOLUME REUSE parameter for the storage pool the
tape belongs to.
04-23. *What is this ANR9999D error message. I don't understand it.
ANR9999D is the catchall error that (usually) indicates a problem with
low-level issues. See Richard Sim's entry on ANR9999D at
http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts for more details.
04-24. *I'm upgrading my TSM server from version X.X to version Y.Y.
Any known problems?
Read the Quickstart manual for the version you're upgrading to. (See
subsection 3 under answer 03-02 for the location.) Also, there should be
readme files, either in the base media or in the subdirectory where you
downloaded the maintenance level or patch. (There's a reason why the file is
called "readme".) The procedures, basically, is:
1) Do a fresh full dbb of the TSM server (in case you have to fall back).
2) Follow the procedures in the Quickstart manual.
--
Mark Stapleton (stapleton AT berbee DOT com)
Certified TSM consultant
Certified AIX system engineer
MCSE
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