I realize that some of this has been discussed before, but I can seem to
find a thread on it and management is looking for
recommendations/thoughts/feedback.

On our new, big, beefy Dell 2900 TSM server (8GB RAM, 2-Quad-Core Xeon
processors) , we are seeing some high CPU spikes and are wondering why.

Management wants to know, does the TSM server make good use of the
multi-core/cpu hardware?

Yes we realize that I/O is the main factor, especially with 225+ clients,
although the daily backup load is < 2TB)

This is TSM 5.4.0 x86_64 on RedHat 4.   Going to upgrade to 5.4.1 soon.

I have gone through all the various TSM tuning guides/slideshows and we
are set for all optimal/recommended values.  DBBuffsize is at 768MB (some
books I see talk about 1/8 to 1/2 of the memory, not to exceed 1GB). The
database is divided into 20GB chunks.

----------------------------------------------------
Zoltan Forray
Virginia Commonwealth University
Office of Technology Services
University Computing Center
e-mail: zforray AT vcu DOT edu
voice: 804-828-4807