That's a curious question, and an interesting idea.

I see the advantages of  "set it and forget it" with replication, let it catch 
up on its own, without manual intervention.

But I'm also wondering *why* your export/import is sooooo slow.  No inherent 
reason it should be.

I'm assuming your portable TSM server just has a really big disk to hold all 
the data from the remote client?
Do you start multiple exports? If you start multiple filespaces concurrently 
you should be able to run at the full bandwidth available between your portable 
and home TSM server, on your in-house network.

If that's not happening, I wonder if the problem could be the disk speed on the 
portable server, or the NIC is already too  busy on your home server.
If the problem is a resource bottleneck, then you'll have the same problem with 
either replication or export/import.

Also, 
if your portable TSM server has enough disk to hold all the data from the 
remote client, Have you ever tried  just copying the data wholesale to the 
disk, with drag&drop or xcopy? (assuming Windows here as an example).  Then 
bring it back, do the first back up in house, rename filespaces on the server 
end as needed.

W



We just started a project around consolidated backup of WAN-connected branch 
offices to a central TSM server. As always distant nodes, the first problem to 
cope with is how to get the first full backup of the node without waiting for 
days, weeks or months. We usually do that by sending a small TSM server to the 
branch office, do a first full backup, send it back to HQ and import the 
node(s) to the production TSM server.

However, export/import is sooo ridiculously slow so the export often takes 
days. So we have discussed upgrading the temp server to v6.3.4 and use node 
replication to "copy" the nodes. Lots of advantages, it can be put in a 
set-and-forget configuration until the nodes are fully replicated so switching 
the nodes to the prod server is pretty easy, but how fast is node replication 
actually?

Is node replication faster or slower than exports in a setup like this? Any 
thoughts or real-life experience?

- Bent