----- "John C. Dury" <JDury AT DUQLIGHT DOT COM> wrote:


>
> 1.        How hard is it to move from an AIX TSM server box to a Linux
> TSM server? I'm hoping it's as easy as building the new box (tape
> drive,stg pool etc) and then restoring the DB and tweaking the new
> config. I know there is more to it than that but without researching
> it yet, that seems like a logical high level overview.
>

You can't do it that way - DB's cant' be restored to a different platform.  
Your best bet is to build the new box and do an 'export server' and/or 'export 
node' to move the definitions, policy, data, etc across.  It's the best 
approach anyway as you get to test each client (which will need the client 
config changing as well).

> 2.        Will there be much of a performance difference between and
> AIX based TSM server and a Linux based TSM server?

Ah that's a big question.  It depends on the hardware more than the OS - Linux 
on the same hardware as AIX would run about the same.  Changing from the Power 
architecture to Intel is a different story as the I/O paths are very different 
- the Power architecture is much more efficient at moving buffers around than 
Intel.  The new Nehalem chips are reported to be pretty good though.  I have a 
ppt from IBM that explains a little, but it's not detailed enough on the 
architectural differences.  I'm sure your System P sales guy would love to get 
his teeth into the differences though.

>
> 3.       Going from mixed speeds slots of PCi-X to PCI Express 8x and
> 4x slots  should be a significant improvement correct?

Depends more on what you're connecting to - look for the slowest thing in the 
loop.  It might be that the storage is using an array shared with something 
busy or a bottleneck between two Fiberchannel switches.

>
> I know there are a lot of factors here but we are concerned we aren't
> getting the best performance for our existing hardware. 30MBs (not
> Mbps) for a LTO4 drives seems pretty slow and with 4 4x PCI-E and 4 8x
> PCI-E slots, I can balance out the I/O across cards and slots  much
> better than I can now.
>
> Comments and criticisms? Linux vs AIX?
> Thanks for any insight!

When looking at TSM performance you are best to look at the whole system - from 
client filesystem right through network and database to tape.  I'd suggest you 
start by reading up on the TSM instrumentation 
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=663&context=SSGSG7&dc=DA400&uid=swg27012867&loc=en_US&cs=UTF-8&lang=en&rss=ct663tivoli
 for a better picture.  You might be surprised at what's causing the low speed.