I think your easiest solution, seeing as you have some idea of what the server would need to be capable of is just to talk to IBM and get them to spec out a suitable solution for you. The reason for this is that there are so many different solutions to do the job, but I would assume you have a limited budget for doing this.
You may just want to consider the following: - GbE is a definate must if you have it available for use and if your network switching gear supports it, and you only need to be connected to one (maybe two) subnets consider a GbE Etherchannel (as GbE adapters cost very little in the scheme of things). I have got this in place and can regularly sustain 90 to 100MB per seconds throughput! - Fibre channel disks are about the only performance option available to you. If you have an enterprise storage array such as an ESS you may want to consider using it for for Disk storage requirements, alternatively Fastt arrays are the cheaper alternative. - For your tape libraries, I use 3584 libraries with LTO1 drives but you may find it cheaper to expand on your existing 3494 libraries using later generation 3590 drives, although I am not familiar with 3590 costs. - In terms of the server, the only major consideration is to make sure you get a server such as a P630 or P650 which can support (or be expanded to support) many PCI adapters. In terms of processing requirements our systems back up a couple of terabytes every night and only have 2 750MHz Power4 CPUs and 2GB memory. The new P series servers are all now 1.2GHz and above!!! Hope this provides some food for thought! Many thanks Andy Wilcox UNIX Systems Administrator Midlands Electricity -----Original Message----- From: Nancy R. Brizuela [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 24 March 2004 00:19 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Sizing an AIX platform and tape libraries Hello All, We will be phasing out our OS/390 mainframe in the next few years. Currently, we have our TSM server installed on the mainframe, so we will need to move it off and on to something else. Based on conversations to this list and the Redbook, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Implementation Guide, I believe that we definitely need to move to AIX. The above Redbook is not very helpful as far as sizing the AIX machine, saying that it is an "inexact" art. Here are our current and future requirements: 1) Right now we are backing up about 150 GB/ night, but we need to add Exchange and a new student information system (Banner) to this. We are estimating that we will soon grow to at least 500 -600 GB/night. 2) Workload consists of 95 clients, consisting of from small 20-30gb Unix and Windows systems, to DB (Oracle) and file servers with half to one terabyte of storage. This will grow to 120 or so clients soon. 3) We are currently storing 10.7 TB total data in two libraries, one local tape library and a second copy of everything at a remote tape library (3494 ATLs w/3590 E drives). Looks like this storage could triple, given how much we will be backing up each night (15 TB in each location). 4) Network is Gigabit Ethernet. 5) We would like to use one large server vs. multiple servers. Does anyone have a similar scenario that is on AIX that works well? Please describe, including tape libraries! Does anyone know of any additional guidance available on choosing an AIX platform size and choosing an appropriate tape library? Thanks! 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