Hi Keith

I had a similar idea a while back.  In my case it was about using a
single TSM infrastructure to provide backups to multiple independent
customers.

My idea was to have a vmware box and a standard TSM server image which
would have enough disk to store one night's backup.  The next storage
pool would reside on a big back-end TSM server.  There would be no copy
pools on the front end server, but the back end server would have its
primary pool both deduplicated and backed up with the copypool data sent
offsite.

If there is a TSM configration manager in the mix, then adding a new
customer would be as simple as cloning the standard VMware image and
connecting to the config manager.  With approriate firewall rules in
place you might even get away with open registration.  Other big pluses
are that the customer level TSM servers can use a basic client licence
since there is no direct tape connection, and there is only one set of
offsite tapes to deal with no matter how many customers you have.  The
backend TSM box only has to deal with other TSM servers and so has a
small database.

This was never implemented due to other priorities and the need to
source a box to host the front end VMs. But, I think it could work and
it is similar enough to your idea that it confirms it is a good one.
I'm not sure about dual copypools though.  A landing pad for each VM
migrating daily to a server-to-server primary pool might work better.

I'd be interested to know what you finally decide.

Regards

Steve

Steven Harris
TSM Admin, Paraparaumu, New Zealand



On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 13:32:24 -0600, "Huebner,Andy,FORT WORTH,IT"
<Andy.Huebner AT ALCONLABS DOT COM> wrote:

I am not sure I understand.
You want to build virtual TSM servers with no storage pools to funnel
the data to a physical TSM with storage pools to reduce the workload
on the physical server?  What work are you trying to reduce since the
physical server will still have the data on its network connection
and
on its storage devices.

Consider these random thoughts:
iSCSI
Library Managers are not evil
K.I.S.S.
Backups are for fun, restores are serious
LPAR > guest


Andy Huebner


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf
Of Keith Arbogast
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2011 1:01 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] copypool-only TSM server on a VM

I have been asked to evaluate the use of copypool-only TSM servers
built on virtual machines.

Virtual machines on ESX can't do I/O to tape devices, but the source
server for a server-to-server copy pool does not need to do I/O to
tape devices. It sends its files to the target TSM server which does
the tape I/O.  So, potentially, several TSM servers built on virtual
machines could send virtual volumes to one physical TSM server target
with tape I/O capability. Primary pools would be defined on the
source
servers, but they would be marked unavailable permanently.

Each TSM server on a virtual machine would have two copy pools: one
on-site and the other off-site; instead of an on-site primary pool
and
an off-site copy pool.

The reason for doing this would be; to divide the backup load into
smaller chunks across more TSM servers, to avoid buying more physical
servers, and to share tape drives without using a Library Manager.

A detriment of this setup would be that reclamation of the copypools
would be degraded with no primary tape pools to read from.

Are there other obvious or subtle problems with this idea? Or, is it
brilliant?...

Which copypool would restore files come from? How would that be
managed?

Our TSM license is based on TB in primary storage, so extra licenses
are not a factor.

Please, don't be shy.

Thank you,
Keith Arbogast
Indiana University

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