I think Miles gave a great answer, that is just the approach I would take.
We are currently running 500 clients on a dedicated F50, 2 processors, 1 GB
memory, 4 STK 9840 tape drives in an STK 9710 robot. TSM is at 4.1.3
2 network adapters, one GB ethernet, one 100MB ethermet.
Clients are primarly Win2K & WinNT; some Win95, Win98, AIX, OS/2, MAC.
We back up about 140 GB a day; 10 GB is from one data base, the rest is all
small stuff.
The small stuff actually has more impact on your server than big chunks of
data from data bases.
Total storage is 5 TB on site, 5 TB offsite.
The DB is 30 GB, 82% full. Currently have 2 buses for the 9840's.
When the load was smaller I had the DB on RAID; had to give that up to get
more speed and go to physical mirrors.
Disk is some SCSI-RAID in an external RAID cabinet (slow, used only for
storage pool), SSA disk, internal Ultra SCSI disk - essentially anything I
can get my hands on, spread across 4 adapters. Total of 130 GB in the disk
storage pool.
The good news - as a former mainframe storage and performance person, I can
tell you that you will be very pleased with the performance you get out of
AIX - I don't think you will have any problem at all, the I/O just screams.
TSM isn't actually very CPU-intensive when it comes to backups. Our F50 is
just cruising along most of the time. We're getting a bit tight on time
schedules, but the problem is reclaims, and expiration, not backups
themselves. Again this is because we do 130 GB of small files every day.
If I had a bigger robot, and could reclaim less often, there would be no
issue at all.
Miles is right I think, in that for a system your size you should be
concerned about I/O more than anything. More good news - you will be able
to afford a lot more disk on an AIX box. Our last buy was for 3 - 18 GB
drives, less than $5K.
Remember that, just like on OS/390, bigger drives aren't necessarily always
better- make sure you buy enough disks (not just enough space) to
physically mirror your DB (preferably across different adapters). Make sure
the RS6000 you buy is expandable so you can add adapters, as well as disk,
if you need to spread your I/O some more.
Good luck!
************************************************************************
Wanda Prather
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
443-778-8769
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" -
Scott Adams/Dilbert
************************************************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: Miles Purdy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 9:50 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: TSM on AIX question.
I'll take a 'best guess'...
The area where you should concentrate more resources is on the I/O capacity
of the server. It looks like you have six (database, log and four disk
storage pools) 'chunks' of disk to configure, not to mention the adapters to
connect to the STK and the ethernet adapters. First count the number of
adapters that you have/need. I would think you have at least two of each. Do
you prefer SCSI or SSA disks? RAID levels make a big difference in
performance.
Next find a AIX server with at least as many PCI slots as adapters you need,
watch out for the number of 64 bit slots (if you have 64-bit adapters) and
look at the number of buses with the box.
I currently use a Silver Node (in an SP) for my TSM server (this is the same
as an H50 or F50). It has 4 CPU's and 2 GB of memory, it works well, but our
environment is a little smaller. It has 3 SCSI, 1 SSA, 3 ethernet, 1 Switch
adapters.
I would like to upgrade it, when I do I plan to go to a 6H1. For you I
wouldn't go with anything smaller. The M80 is good choice and if you really
want performance a 680 is at the top of the scale. I know of one shop that
uses a S70 for ONLY their TSM server. But like I said focus on the I/O.
Miles
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Miles Purdy
System Manager
Farm Income Programs Directorate
Winnipeg, MB, CA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph: (204) 984-1602 fax: (204) 983-7557
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 19-Sep-01 6:41:05 AM >>>
Good morning everyone.
I have been asked to look into possibly moving our TSM 4.1.3 server on
OS/390 to an AIX box. I would appreciate any information that you can
provide. Here is our existing OS/390 TSM server set up.
TSM 4.1.3 on OS/390 2.10 backing up the following clients AIX, NT, Novell,
Win95, Win98, OS/2 (no not a misprint), OS/390 USS and SunSolaris. We are
moving about 280GB over night and we then execute the storage pool copies,
expiration and reclamation during the day. Some of our Domino clients (no
we are not using TDP) take about 20 - 23 hours to backup. The TSM data base
is currently 37.5GB and running at 78% utilization. Our primary storage
pools are 70GB, 13GB, 5GB and 1GB. We have 8 STK 9840 cartridge drives in a
Powderhorn Silo and are using RMM to manage tapes and are running
migrations at night along with the backups. I know that it would be faster
to stage everything to DASD and then migrate to tape but I do not have the
DASD capacity to accomplish this..
My question is how large would my AIX box need to be to accomplish these
same backups more efficiently?
Any input is appreciated.
Thanks,
Brian
Brian L. Nick
Systems Technician - Storage Solutions
The Phoenix Companies Inc.
100 Bright Meadow Blvd
Enfield CT. 06082-1900
E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PHONE: (860)403-2281
