I second the recommendation to look at Servergraph, http://www.servergraph.com. 
 Not only will its trending components help you forecast the need for more 
tapes, its various other charts will help you determine how the tapes are being 
used and tons of other info about your TSM installation.

David Ehresman
University of Louisville

>>> james.etchison AT SIEMENS DOT COM 08/12/05 3:11 PM >>>
Greetings,

This is my first posting to this list, so please forgive me if this is
not the right type of question or the right group to ask. 

I am currently a Client Manager for a large corporation that uses TSM as
its backup solution. TSM seems to be working very well for my client,
with one glaring exception: tape usage forecasting. 

On a number of occasions I have had to "surprise" my client by telling
them they needed to buy thousands of more tapes. The first few times
this has been forgiven, but with each successive request, they have
gotten more and more irritated. From what I have been told by my Storage
Manager, TSM does not have any Tape Forecasting capabilities. But from a
business standpoint, this is a very real need because it is a
substantial cost.

At this point I am left with no option but to continue suprising my
customer, which is not a career-enhancing choice. :)

My question is this: how have others resolved this dilemma? Is there an
add-on product that can be purchased that might solve this? 

Any help would be welcome. Thanks!