Well, we always have the info center.
Sorry, just joking.
Hans Chr.
On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 3:16 PM, Rhodes, Richard L. <
rrhodes AT firstenergycorp DOT com> wrote:
> Great Comments!
>
> I've often wondered if IBM appreciates just how complicated TSM is.
>
> We had a big discussion the other day about would we recommend TSM to
> other possible customers.
> The answer we a very qualified "yes". We really like TSM for its core
> feature - incremental forever backup system. It saved our posteriors years
> ago when we were drowning in periodic full backups, especially from remote
> sites. But the tradeoff is learning/maintaining a very complicated program
> that requires lots of resources. Roger below mentions policies. To this
> day, after working with TSM for many years (since TSM v3.7), if the topic
> of policies comes up I have to look up and refresh my memory of what they
> are and how they interact. And then, try and explain them to a
> user/manager/auditor/whomever.
>
> The Admin Guide is the best document I know of for how TSM fits together -
> how to get your head around TSM. No other documentation comes close.
> Losing it would be a big loss.
>
> Sometimes when we talk we wonder if the folks who develop and support TSM
> (and most products today from all vendors) actually use their own products
> like we use them. If all they had to learn/use TSM was the standard
> documentation, I wonder how far they would get. This is why this mailing
> list is SO great!
>
> Rick
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> Roger Deschner
> Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 11:06 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Re: Bring back TSM Administrator's Guide
>
> Thank you for your response Clare. It's good to know these comments are
> being read.
>
> There are a large number of areas that cannot be covered separately. A
> very large topic is Policy, which is one of Spectrum Protect's hardest
> to understand areas, yet it affects and is affected by everything else.
> For instance, it has been essential to understand Policy in crafting our
> hybrid D2D2D2T solution. Or when the auditor came and said we needed to
> keep just a certain set of files for five years. The Admin Guide covered
> Policy well enough that you could make your way through its many
> complexities and get it to work for you. But to cover Policy adequately,
> it had to refer to many other areas of the book.
>
> Policy is just one example, which really needs everything else in the
> book, in order to explain it well enough. But it needs to all be in one
> place. I carry 4 PDFs (Admin Guide, Admin Ref, Windows Client, Unix
> Client) around on a USB stick so I can refer to them wherever I am and
> whatever the network is there.
>
> Another topic that the solution guides simply do not cover, is the
> complex interrelationships between storage pools of different kinds -
> tape, VTL, disk, file, optical, etc, and how to structure migration,
> reclamation, collocation, and storage pool backup to make the data flow
> among them the way you want.
>
> There's sveral other topics of similar complexity, such as managing the
> client scheduler, and how to build a daily schedule of server
> activities.
>
> There are of course specialized topics that shouldn't be in there. You
> mentioned NDMP. Another is V5 to V6/7 migration. Virtual Machines could
> be its own book.
>
> The basic issue here is that, as the sophisticated and fully evolved
> "best of breed", Spectrum Protect has a rather steep learning curve. It
> always has, since it was WDSF. After 20 years with WDSF/ADSM/TSM/SP I am
> still learning things, and I still refer to the Admin Guide frequently.
>
> Doing away with its best documentation can only hurt this highly
> sophisticated product. Coherent how-to knowledge is the essential weapon
> in the face of complexity. Without the Administrator's Guide, more will
> simply declare Spectrum Protect to be "too complicated to understand",
> and settle for an inferior solution that is easier to understand. It's a
> battle that those of us who know the product well, constantly fight,
> which is why this book is so essential to the product.
>
> Roger Deschner University of Illinois at Chicago rogerd AT uic DOT
> edu
> ======I have not lost my mind -- it is backed up on tape somewhere.=====
>
>
> On Tue, 15 Dec 2015, J. Pohlmann wrote:
>
> >Hi Clare. The Admin Guide provided a one-stop shopping approach to all
> >functional areas of Spectrum Protect. I think this is what's missing from
> >the current documentation. Clearly the Admin Guide was aimed at an
> >experienced person as opposed to a novice. In an initial Spectrum Protect
> >implementation, the Solutions Guides are of value. However they fall short
> >in supplying guidance and "how-to" or "setup" information to an existing
> >installation. So, even though the Admin Guide became bigger over the
> >releases, the topics are still of extreme value. For example tape is still
> >aa viable media, especially in the light of LTO 7 technology. It fits into
> >large to very large enterprises, yet when it comes to media management of
> >disaster protection implementation, we have no guidance in the new
> >publications. So, I would vote for the return of the Admin Guide, it still
> >is the best collection of implementation and usage guidance for all the
> >various Spectrum Protect aspects. I would prefer one book to a large set
> of
> >publications that are topic oriented.
> >
> >Best regards,
> >Joerg Pohlmann
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf
> >Of
> >Clare Byrne
> >Sent: December 15, 2015 13:59
> >To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> >Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Bring back TSM Administrator's Guide
> >
> >Please be assured that we in IBM development are listening and are
> >discussing future actions regarding the Administrator's Guide content
> since
> >the feedback about the 7.1.3 release that did not include that book.
> >I gave some information in a response to that earlier feedback:
> >http://www.mail-archive.com/adsm-l AT vm.marist DOT edu/msg99286.html
> >
> >We are working on a plan to publish a solution guide for the disk-to-tape
> >architecture next. This should fill in some gaps left by the removal of
> the
> >Administrator's Guide. Timing of the publication is yet to be determined.
> >
> >We are also discussing how to fill the information needs for those who
> will
> >not be using one of the four documented architectures. We already point to
> >the 7.1.1 guides from newer releases but we realize this is not ideal.
> >Possible actions include creating additional, supplemental information
> >outside of the solution guides, similar to what we have done for the
> >information about NDMP (
> >
> http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGSG7_7.1.4/srv.admin/r_ndmp.htm
> >l
> >).
> >
> >What are the most important subjects from the old Administrator's Guide
> for
> >us to consider? Knowing more specifics about your priorities would be very
> >helpful to us for setting our priorities and plans. Web traffic for the
> >content on IBM Knowledge Center gives us some information but not a
> complete
> >picture of needs.
> >
> >Meanwhile, to make the 7.1.1 Administrator's Guide PDFs easier to find and
> >download, today we added the five English PDFs to the Tivoli Storage
> Manager
> >wiki. Find the links to them on this page:
> >
> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivol
>
> >i%20Storage%20Manager/page/Version%207.1.1%20PDF%20files%20of%20IBM%20Tivoli
> >%20Storage%20Manager%20documentation
> >
> >The 7.1.1 Administrator's Guide PDFs are also still available in the
> >711_411_PDFs.zip file that you can find at
> >ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/products/TSM/current/
> >The available translations are in the 711_411_PDFs_nl.zip file in the same
> >directory. All this content (English and other languages) remains
> available
> >online in IBM Knowledge Center at
> >
> http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGSG7_7.1.1/com.ibm.itsm.srv.com
> >mon.doc/t_server_main.html
> >
> >PDFs for previous releases, including several unsupported levels, are also
> >still available. Start on this page:
> >
> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivol
> >i%20Storage%20Manager/page/PDF%20documentation
> >
> >(Note: This wiki was unavailable for several days, starting on 11
> December.
> >While the wiki is available again, restoration of some pages and links is
> >still in progress. Unfortunately you might find some links that don't
> work,
> >especially for the unsupported releases. I don't know the projected date
> for
> >completion.)
> >
> >Clare Byrne
> >Information Development for IBM Spectrum Protect Tucson, AZ US
> >
>
>
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