Keith, A few thoughts.... Putting a TSM server on a VM may have advantages in performing a quick recovery of the TSM server in the event of a corrupted DB or other nasty event. Not sure how DB2 would integrate with VM snapshots but it sounds interesting.
If you are backing up VMs or data located on the same VM host as the TSM server VM, are you really protected or just practicing backups with no real intention of performing a restore when there is a serious problem? Throughput will probably be your biggest obstacle and may consume most of the resources on the VM host. Have you considered several TSM instances on a non-VM server with the same beefiness as your proposed VM host? It sounds like someone is trying to get you to save a nickle or two and squeeze a few CPU cycles out of a TSM server to share with an application server. If you put the TSM server on a VM host that also has a largish DB and depend on production timing to share resources, you may run into a resource conflict when either environment runs slightly out of it's 'normal' production window causing a death spiral for both environments. Cheers, Neil Strand Storage Engineer - Legg Mason Baltimore, MD. (410) 580-7491 Whatever you can do or believe you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic. -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Arbogast Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2011 2:01 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [ADSM-L] copypool-only TSM server on a VM I have been asked to evaluate the use of copypool-only TSM servers built on virtual machines. Virtual machines on ESX can't do I/O to tape devices, but the source server for a server-to-server copy pool does not need to do I/O to tape devices. It sends its files to the target TSM server which does the tape I/O. So, potentially, several TSM servers built on virtual machines could send virtual volumes to one physical TSM server target with tape I/O capability. Primary pools would be defined on the source servers, but they would be marked unavailable permanently. Each TSM server on a virtual machine would have two copy pools: one on-site and the other off-site; instead of an on-site primary pool and an off-site copy pool. The reason for doing this would be; to divide the backup load into smaller chunks across more TSM servers, to avoid buying more physical servers, and to share tape drives without using a Library Manager. A detriment of this setup would be that reclamation of the copypools would be degraded with no primary tape pools to read from. Are there other obvious or subtle problems with this idea? Or, is it brilliant?... Which copypool would restore files come from? How would that be managed? Our TSM license is based on TB in primary storage, so extra licenses are not a factor. Please, don't be shy. Thank you, Keith Arbogast Indiana University IMPORTANT: E-mail sent through the Internet is not secure. Legg Mason therefore recommends that you do not send any confidential or sensitive information to us via electronic mail, including social security numbers, account numbers, or personal identification numbers. Delivery, and or timely delivery of Internet mail is not guaranteed. Legg Mason therefore recommends that you do not send time sensitive or action-oriented messages to us via electronic mail. This message is intended for the addressee only and may contain privileged or confidential information. Unless you are the intended recipient, you may not use, copy or disclose to anyone any information contained in this message. If you have received this message in error, please notify the author by replying to this message and then kindly delete the message. Thank you.
