Tab, Just to throw out a thought - our company is currently looking at a vendor called Data Domain (I ran into their product during the Storage Decisions 2003 conference last Oct). They make an ATA based appliance that is supposed to be able to store in the range of 23TB using only 16 raid10 disks. Their claim to fame is a front-end that does what they call "Global Compression", meaning that they eliminate redundant chunks of data - which, in the backup world, represents a lot of our data stream.
Like I said, we are only starting to look at them (as a potential disk-based replacement of our primary tape pools), so I cant say if they can really do what they say, but it might be worth checking out their website. If anyone else out there has evaluated the product good or bad, please share the results. Steve Schaub Systems Engineer Haworth, Inc 616-393-1457 (desk) 616-886-8821 (cell phone) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (text page) WWJWMTD -----Original Message----- From: Tab Trepagnier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 2:42 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: TSM best practices manual? Wanda, Thanks very much for the suggestions. In answer to your questions: 1. I know I have compression operating on the drives because our average tape capacity is 1.6 X uncompressed capacity on all three media. 2. Most of what we back up is server data; a little bit is OS, etc, but not much. We're a Notes and Oracle shop and we have a LOT of data from both systems. We also design and manufacture our own products, and our engineers routinely generate 100MB+ CAD files. 3. We keep five copies of user-created data, and two copies of everything else. Design data is also archived but that isn't relevant to this discussion. 4. True, but I already have FIVE libraries; I am trying to avoid buying a sixth. This is what I think I'm going to do. At present we keep everything except permanent archives online fulltime since we don't really have an "operator". We have two parallel data paths: "small clients" going to a 3575, and "large clients" going to the 3583. I'm going to recombine those paths into a single path and make liberal use of the Migration Delay feature. The idea is for the incoming data to travel: Disk --> 3575 --> 3583 --> MSL DLT --> shelf. The idea is to have data 1-2 days old on disk (radical!), data 2-10 days old on fast-access 3570, data 10-180 days old on LTO, and data older than 6-12 months on the shelf. The little MSL retains nothing but is instead just a portal. As for a "best practices" guide, I've begun browsing the TSM 5.2 Implementation Guide to see if that provides the info I'm looking for. I'm also browsing my training handout from the ADSM 3.1 Advanced Implementation course. Thanks again for the suggestions. Tab "Prather, Wanda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/28/2004 12:44 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: Re: TSM best practices manual? Tab, I'm not sure this is an issue of TSM design - if your libraries are out of capacity in terms of SLOTS, rather than throughput, you just have "too much" data. That either means you are 1) not compressing the data as much as you can, or 2) backing up things you don't need to 3) keeping data longer/more copies than you need to 4) really in need of additional library space For 1), it's a matter of checking to make sure that your drives do have compression turned on. If you can't compress at the drive level, turn it on at the client level. For 2-4, I don't know any magic/automatic way of figuring it out. Here's what I do: dsmadmc -id=xxxxx -password=yyyyyyy -commadelimited "select CURRENT_DATE as DATE,'SPACEAUDIT',node_name as node, backup_mb, backup_copy_mb,archive_mb, archive_copy_mb from auditocc"`; Suck that into a spreadsheet and look to see which clients are taking up the most space on the server side. Then go look in detail at the management classes and exclude lists associated with the "hoggish" clients, and see what you can find out about the copies they are keeping. - Are you keeping copies of EVERYTHING on the client for a zillion versions, rather than just the important data files? - for Windows 2000, are you keeping more copies of the SYSTEM OBJECT than would likely be used? - Look at their dsmsched.log files and see what is actually being backed up. - Be suspicious of TDP clients not deleteing copies they are supposed to. (For example, if they are supposedly keeping 10 versions of a 10 GB data base, but the SELECT shows 500 GB on the server, there's something wrong.) - If it's user/group space, are there lots of .mp3 files? (exclude 'em with a clientoptionset) - Make sure you aren't backing up TEMP directories etc.. I run the query monthly and save the data so that I can compare from one month to the next. That tells me which clients are GROWING the fastest. Those are the ones to attack. With luck, you will find some things that you can do that will extend your library life a while. Maybe not. But at least you will be able to tell your management WHY you are running out of space. Hope that helps. Wanda Prather Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 443-778-8769 "Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" - Dilbert/Scott Adams -----Original Message----- From: Tab Trepagnier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 10:11 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: TSM best practices manual? TSM 5.1.7 on AIX 4.3.3 9 TB online, total of 24 TB managed. Our TSM tape libraries are nearing their capacity. Currently we're running a fairly simple TSM system, using little of the new functionality introduced since V 3.1. We backup to onsite tape and make copies to a copypool whose tapes are vaulted offsite. That's pretty much the entire system. Our current tape library fleet consists of a 3583-L72 (LTO-1), two 3575s (and L12 and an L18), an HP SureStore 4/40 (DLT 8000), and an HPaq MSL5026 (DLT 8000). Before we spend $60-80K - or more - on another tape library, I'd like to review the system's architecture to see if there is another path we can go. I've been through the TSM Admin Guide and Technical Guide, but what I'm really looking for is a description of current best practices regarding TSM system design. Is there another document that would present that info better? TIA Tab Trepagnier TSM Administrator Laitram, L.L.C.
