6TB day.  yikes.  my calculations give me a sustained transfer of
72.82Megabytes per second for 24 hours, to do that.  That's assuming you
have 24 hours to do the 6TB.

Like you were saying, the bottleneck for this large an environment is
probably going to be network capacity into the server, or output
capacity to your tape drives.  I couldn't even guestimate the impact of
TSM processing CPU/RAM wise on a setup this large.  Many small files
will definitely hurt, but if 4 of the TB are just Oracle dumps, TSM screams.

I think it imperative that you make sure LAN free backups are integrated
into this setup.  SAN DISK to SAN TAPE.  I've not used it but everything
else about TSM has been spot on.

We backup to disk and then sweep to tape (on and offsite), but for a
setup this large, I don't know how practical that is.  But off course,
you could configure some backups go to disk, some straight to tape, etc.

If you are worried about the scalability, go with the 6800.  With the
880 it *could* be an issue, not with the 6800.

more power!

scott




Reiss David IT751 (ext-CDI) wrote:

Yeah.  More info:

I'm looking to do about 6 TB of data backed up per day, into a library with
a capicity of around 400 TB (20 LTO2 drives in a Storage Tek 5500 most
likely).  About 2500 systems to backup total.

This will run intergrated into a SAN environment (HP XP1024) with roughly 10
TB of disk reservered for TSM Disk Storage Pools, and the SF6800 will also
have a Fibre JBOD attachement (probably storedge 3510 -- 12 x146GB disk) for
the TSM database and logvolumes.  I'm going to be backing up to the disk
pools first, and then migrating to tape later.

The reason we have been looking at the SF6800 is the simple fact that we can
load it up with fibre cards for attachment into the SAN switches so that we
can use the SAN for as much of our backups as possible.  Our current XP1024
(really Hatachi 9980 disk under the hood) is about 50 TB of total disk
storage, with I'm told, plans for it to be about 140 TB in the next year to
18 months.  There are multipule SAN switches built in here, so we should be
able to do more than the 2G SAN speed due to the mulipule feeds from various
switches.

Basically, SUN tells me that we should be able to jam the 6800 with IO out
the ying-yang.  I am wondering if they are correct for a TSM setup.

We'll be intergating this with our current soluation of two old H70's and a
3494 with 28 3590E1A drives with a capicity of about 100 TB. The problems
with it being that we are always processor and RAM limitiation of the
servers.  All Fibre attached with about 5 TB of disk in the SAN now.

I want the choke point of the backup systems to be the tape Drives and SAN
disk, so that when we do reach limits... we won't have to worry about
needing new servers or more RAM...  I want to be able to know that we can
just drop some more tape drives or more disk into place, and run with it.
Scalibility is very important here.

I don't mind overkilling something to a point, but the 6800 does almost seem
to be overkill to me.  Half my issue with it is sitting back and thinking
"So, they want to sell me a 6800.  Just go with it." Followed by weird
ToolMan grunting.   :-)

The IO requirements are what appears to be driving me toward it.  The
processors and RAM... while nice... those aren't driving factors.

Thank you,

David N. Reiss
TSM Support Engineer
david.reiss AT siemens DOT com
407-736-3912


-----Original Message-----
From: Cowperthwaite, Eric [mailto:eric.cowperthwaite AT EDS DOT COM]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 4:13 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: SUN F6800's


David,

The majority of our TSM servers run on Sun workgroup platforms, ranging from
E420R's to V480 and V880 machines. We have one on an E3500, but the V880 has
more I/O capacity than an E3500. Bottom line, you probably are wasting money
on an SF6800, although maybe we could give a bit more insight if we knew
what your I/O requirements were.

Eric W. Cowperthwaite
EDS Operations Solutions
California Medicaid (Medi-Cal)
eric.cowperthwaite AT eds DOT com


-----Original Message-----
From: Reiss David IT751 (ext-CDI) [mailto:david.reiss AT SIEMENS DOT COM]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 7:41 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: SUN F6800's

Is anyone out there running a TSM Server on a dedicated Sun F6800 machine?
We are sizing our servers for replacement and in sizing IO Requirements with
Sun, TSM, and Storage Tek, we're being directed at the F6800 (which almost
seems like overkill to me) by our vendors.

I was thinking that the V880 or V1280 would be where they would end up
putting us, but the costs of a couple of V1280's or one F6800 with two
domains seem to be about the same.  So, is anybody out there using a very
large machine like the F6800 dedicated to its existance as a TSM server, and
are you experiencing any problems with them?

Normally, I have worked with large RS/6000 AIX machines but my current
company doesn't like AIX, so I'm running with the Solaris bulls now.

Thanks,

David N. Reiss
TSM Support Engineer
david.reiss AT siemens DOT com
407-736-3912

--
Scott Walters
Packet Pusher - "The world speaks IP"

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