Hello all!

I'm maintaining a 3494 w/3 3590 drives that is getting a bit long in the
tooth and short on capacity.  We're investigating some options and I'd
like to the list's opinion.

At this point in time it isn't politically feasible to get a new tape
library so we're kind of stuck.  One of the options we're looking at
involves the use of a big pile of disk and the file devclass.  The
university has a large tape silo that is replicated off site but is only
accessible via ftp.  Here's what we're thinking about doing:

* buy a pile of disk that's ~2x our usage, growing it later as needed.
* allocate a file devclass "VTAPE" on the disk pile
* run our backups to the VTAPE devices
* periodically (weekly) run a backup stgpool to another set of VTAPE and
copy those up to tape silo via FTP.  In addition, make a database backup
and upload that as well.

We're doing the equivalent with real tapes now (sending them offsite,
reclamation, etc).

So here are my questions:
* Is this even feasible, or is there a better solution?
* when I copy the files to the tape silo, do I have to mark their
volumes as offsite?  They're still physically present.
* would it be wise to mark them as offsite while copying them to avoid
corrupted transfers?  It seems like it would in case reclamation snuck
up on me.
* Lets say I have a disaster, am I saving enough to restore TSM?  I've
not had to do it, but here's what I understand the steps to be:
** install TSM
** restore the database via DSMSERV RESTORE DB  (I'd need to use the
devclass and volume params to point at the *.DBB file, right?)
** then what happens?  I assume it knows the names of all of my copy
pool volumes, so I'd just run a RESTORE STG server_pool
COPY=server_copy_pool, right?
* I assume that since reclaimed volumes just disappear from the pool
that during my ftp process I'll want to copy all of the existing volumes
_and then_ remove the ones that no longer exist.

Thanks for any insights on this!
Brian

--
Brian Wheeler
System Administrator || IU Digital Library Program
bdwheele AT indiana DOT edu || 812-855-6792