The Linux Big But!

“I love Linux, I support Linux, I would love to use Linux but….” You wont hear this just from me. The problem is a frustrating one. I for one have a number of Linux TSM servers and they have become somewhat of a problem. For example we had a situation where we decided to deploy a Linux TSM server and proceeded to setup the site. Problems arose when we attempted to connect the Library. As it turned out the version of SUSE was down level and the driver would not work. So we upgraded Linux and the library worked fine, but (there it is again) the RAID controller for the server would not longer work and there was no updated one. This has been and continues to be the problem with Linux. Sure companies beat their chests and yell, “We support Linux!” The problem is that it’s limited support and we the users who implement get left with what turns out to be a patchwork solution. I’m sure many will say, “But I have Linux working and it works fine.” Great! The problem is in the choices available to you hardware wise when architecting the solution. I can be pretty sure that I wont run into to many problems when solutioning for AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, or Windows. With Linux you have to do twice the homework and hope the hardware company keeps its drivers up to date. Just to risky for the data. Don’t get me wrong it has gotten better but there is a long way to go before I would commit to using Linux again.

Unofficial TSM Clients for Linux - Debian

Hi all,

time-to-time I see on various forums questions about TSM client for Debian. IBM itself do not consider Debian being a supported platform, so they do not even plan to create the package. You can find several HOWTO's (mostly created using "alien" package converter) on the web, or you can install rpm and try to solve dependencies on your own.
As our environment is 95%+ Debian based, we created our own .deb package(s). We unpacked the rpm's (both API and BA), created new postinst scripts, sample configs etc. and packed it up in a single package.
Originaly we intended to use them for internal purposes only, but we think someone might find it usefull.

You can find the packages on http://www.adsm.org website - download section

Rules:
1) Package is not an official IBM release, Debian is not supported - use at your own risk
2) read the README ... really .....
3) if you have comment/suggestion/improvement - let me know


Harry

System State & Services Backup Issue

I had a problem recently with McAfee and TSM not playing nice together. Jared Annes (co-worker) figured out the problem and this is his finding. What happened was that changes to the default scanning and file protection procedures were made to McAfee to “lock down” the servers from viruses. Unfortunately the SA’s inadvertently caused TSM to fail every system state and system services backup.  The culprit was one file, TFTP.EXE in the System32 folder due to McAfee locking the file from being read. What I didn’t expect was that a failure of one file would cause TSM to fail on the whole system state and system services backup. I forgot the system state and services are looked at as one object instead of multiple files. The fix was to disable McAfee, then delete TFTP.EXE from the hidden dllcache folder, also from the System32 folder, and then re-enable McAfee. Since then I have had no more troubles with the system state and services backups.

NOTE: If you don’t delete the file from the dllcache folder Windows will copy it back over to the System32 folder recreating the problem you were trying to fix.

All Hail The Java GUI!

Interesting resolution to a restore I just had thought I would pass it on... On one of our Win2K3 servers all admin accounts were crippled due to some corruption in the registry (my vote was on Gremlins!). So they wanted to restore the system state to a week ago.  I tried and the client core dumped due to our permissions being crippled.  So I tried one other thing and that is the Java GUI.  I figured since it runs under the System Account it might work.  Well it did and fixed their problems....I had not used the Java GUI in ages but here is one situation where it came in quite handy.

LAN-Free In A Shared Library Environment

I had to setup a LAN-Free client recently and ran into some trouble with the tape environment.  As you all know I use a shared library environment where multiple TSM servers share a single large library through a library controller TSM instance.  This works great since it allows for a shared scratch pool and TSM can be bounced faster since the DB is less than 2GB.  The problem arises when trying to setup a LAN-Free agent in this complex environment.  If you have ever read the directions for LAN-Free you’ll notice they can be quite confusing since they switch the client port to 1502 to accommodate the LAN-Free agent’s default of 1500.  Now understand 1500 makes sense because the LAN-Free agent is really just a stripped down TSM server. Since the TSM server uses 1500 by default so does the agent.  I decided to use port 1502 for the agent but forgot to change it in the dsmsta.opt file. This kept me from being able to connect to the agent from the client since it was looking at port 1502 and the agent was still using port 1500.

Another issue the directions don’t fully explain is where to point the LAN-Free agent when setting it up.  I will explain how here and hopefully make it easy to understand.

1. Setup the dsm.sys client file with the following lines

ENABLELANFREE           YES
LANFREECOMMMethod       TCPIP
LANFREETCPServeraddress <loopback, DNS name, or IP>
LANFREETCPPort          1502

2. Define the agent to the node’s TSM server and the library controller as a server

define server storagent serverpassword=passw0rd hladdress=<loopback, DNS name, or IP> lladdress=1502

Also don’t forget to register the node if not registered already.

register node <nodename> <password> domain=<domain name>

3.  On the TSM library controller instance path the drives seen by the node/LAN-Free agent machine.  I am assuming you have connected the client node to the SAN environment and zoned a number of drives to the node.  When seen in the OS you can define the path. Make sure you map the paths correctly. In AIX this can be done by running the lscfg –vp | more command and noting the drive serials and noting them to their corresponding drive in TSM.

DEFine PATH STORAGENT <Drive Name> SRCType=SERVER AUTODetect=YES DESTType=DRIVE LIBRary=<Library Name> DEVIce=/dev/rmtX ONLine=YES

Note:   For ACSLS libraries more configuration parameters need to be set. I am showing an IBM hardware example since I would never use anything else!

4. On the client node go to the storage agent’s folder and update the dsmsta.opt file with the following

     tcpport 1502

5. Now from that storage agent directory run the following command

dsmsta setstorageserver myname=storagent mypassword=passw0rd myhladdress=<loopback,DNS name, or IP> servername=<node’s tsm server IP or DNS name> lladdress=1500 <or port used by node’s tsm server>

Note:  Notice I am pointing the agent to the node’s TSM server. Even though it is a library client and does not control the drives, by defining the agent to both the client TSM server and the controller instance a handoff from the library client to the library controller will occur automatically.  If you do not define the LAN-Free agent to the library controller the agent will fail.

You should now be able to test the configuration by starting the dsmsta in the foreground and then from another telnet window start a TSM command line client and run a backup(if using Windows open a dsmc client). If setup correctly you’ll see the agent contact the controller for a drive and mount a tape and commence a LAN-Free backup.

TSM 5.2 End Of Service

I just received notification on end of service for TSM 5.2. The date given was April 30, 2007.  So I would advise everyone to plan their upgrades to 5.3 or higher accordingly. For more information check out the IBM End Of Service webpage.

UPDATE on NDMP Problem!

Support has identified the NDMP problem exists in TSM 5.3.3 if the ONTAP version is lower than 7.1. If you have NetApps make sure your ONTAP version is at or higher than version 7.1 before you upgrade your TSM server to 5.3.3 or higher.