On Wednesday 08 October 2008, Elana Samuels wrote:
> I was recently told by IBM that their new product TSM Fastback will be
> eventually replacing the TDP's.  Unfortunately it doesn't currently work
> directly with TSM's database.  It allows you to replicate the data and then
> you can backup the copy.  That includes Exchange and Databases such as SQL.
> We are waiting for a evaluation copy to actually try it out.  I've seen
> others in this mailing list mention they too are looking at this product.
> If anyone has actually had a chance to play and use it... please share what
> you've learned.
We tried TSM FastBack.  And we are not going to implement it in it's current
form.

- The name is wrong.  "TSM Fastback" means that it belongs to the TSM software
portfolio but it is a total standanlone product.  If you really really really
want, you can backup the backup (so a copy of the backuped data) to a TSM
server.  They should have called it Tivoli Fastback.

- There are some nice features like the snapshot idea:  When restoring a whole
drive, the table of contents is restored and users can access all the data.
In the background, Fastback is restoring the data.  If a user clicks a file,
the data is restored immediatly so he can access his file.  IBM proved it buy
playing a movie that was restoring in the background.  Even a fast forward to
the end of the file worked perfectly.  So a multi million file drive is
restored in a few minutes and the users can access all the data.  Cool.

- You can restore a single file, a single drive (snapshot, so instant access
to the data) or a whole server.  The last option is a bare metal restore on
different hardware without doing any special during the backup.

- Exchange backup: you can restore individual mails / attachments/
contacts / ...  I think they use the same snapshot idea as in my second point
by restoring the drive with the exchange store and then you restore the
single items without restoring the whole drive.  There is a nice frontend for
this where you can drage the items you need from the backup to the primary
exchange server.

- continuous data production:  all changed blocks are recorded and bacuped.
So the backup windows is very minimal.

- Only backup to disk.  You need something like TSM to backup the data to a
tape library.

- Only windows supported.  Linux support is under way.

So, unless IBM is going to incorporated the technology in TSM, we are not
going to implement TSM Fastback.


Stef