If the data is on tape, and you can't connect the old server to the tape 
library, could you connect it to a stand-alone LTO4 tape drive that you could 
plug directly into the Solaris server?  Those aren't so hard to come by, might 
be a cheap solution.  You don't need the original library, only a compatible 
drive, to read the tape and export the data to your new server.

Do you perchance have a contract with a DR site like Sungard?  You could take 
your LTO4 tapes there, including the DB backup, use their Solaris hardware to 
restore your TSM DB, export the data to LTO4 cartridges.  Export-format 
cartridges ARE portable.  You can bring them back to your site and import the 
data to your Linux server.  

If you can't ever read any tape from that Solaris server again, I think the 
only solution is:

Boot the old server (ignore the tape issues).
Backup the DB to a disk devclass.  That creates a flat file that can be FTP'd 
anywhere.

Install TSM on a (borrowed?) Solaris server.
Restore the TSM DB from the flat file.
Connect the Solaris server to your tape library.
Export the archive data server-to-server to your new Linux server. 
Shut down the Solaris box for good.

W


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Nora
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 1:05 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Recover Archived Data from Tapes without Catalog

Hello,
We recently lost a TSM server because of a severe server hardware problem that 
makes the tape library completely inaccessible to the server. We are now 
building a new TSM server and connecting the library to it. However the new TSM 
server we are building is on a different OS (Red Hat linux) while the original 
server was on Solaris 10. The different OS's between the 2 servers makes it 
impossible to restore the existing TSM database although we have it. And the 
old server's inability to use the tape library is also stopping us from using 
the "Export Node" functionality for data we want to save.
We are mainly concerned about 120 GB of archived data that we want to retrieve 
from this tape library with TSM before migrating to the new TSM server.
Does anyone know of a way to read TSM data of LTO4 tapes without the catalog so 
we can save this data? Or does IBM provide such a service ?

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by noranasr AT adma DOT ae via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse AT backupcentral DOT com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------