Virtualizing an I/O monster like that is - well, obviously you're not planning 
on great performance.  A POC? A sandbox?  A demo?  If you just need to have it 
controlling and using a library, how about setting up an iSCSI bridge?  Then 
the interface to the device is entirely within the virtual machine, and all ESX 
sees is lots of network I/O.
For an actual production implementation, that would suck, but you wouldn't 
virtualize a production implementation, not of your main TSM server.  What 
COULD make sense, would be a VM with disk and a SERVER device class leading 
back to a proper I/O monster on the other end of a WAN link.  Then it can act 
as a fast local backup server for the site, and migrate itself empty every day 
into the main storage, where the stgpool backups and so on take place.
I set up such an implementation a couple years ago when the powers that be were 
convinced it was TSM server performance that makes TDP for AS400 worthlessly 
slow.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Micka
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 6:33 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Virtual TSM

Thanks for the info! That's typical of vendors.. any excuse to not support 
their own product. Although I can't say I have ever needed to use the support 
but would be handy if it came to it.

The VM guest would be hosted on a VMware ESX Server 3i. So if I did virtualise 
it and had a tape library connected.. they won't support the TSM server at all?

Have you ever got it working on a VMware ESX server?

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