TSMManager (Cont.)

When not checking for errors the majority of your time will be spent using the Admin tab. The admin tab allows for entering in TSM commands and you'll notice down the upper left side of the window there are preset queries you can issue to the TSM server you have selected. Below the preset commands you'll see the list of the servers you have defined the to TSMManager collector and a simple click on the server you wish to monitor and enter commands for switches the ENTIRE console to that machine. It's instantaneous and you can immediately select the other tabs to see what is happening on your server or enter commands to query for yourself. Another nice feature you can see in the picture below is the ability to save commonly used commands and queries and select them from the drop down list whenever you wish to use them.


Here we have the admin command line and stored and preset commands.

TSMManager is not DB based so it has a few limitations. We have noticed with it monitoring 30 large TSM servers that the collector will have issues with the dsmadmc executables failing (TSMManager opens a dsmadmc on the collector server for each TSM server it is monitoring up to 30 servers per collector). This could be the host server it is running on, but other than that the product has been a godsend to our workload and daily monitoring. I would recommend it for shops with limited TSM skills and those that require the end users ability to monitor backup. It has e-mailing and alert capabilties, individual TSM server reports, consolidated server reports (combines the info for all TSM servers monitored by TSMManager), and even has a DRM/tape management feature for those without DRM. With TSMManagers admin web interface you can monitor you systems and it also allows the end users to log in to a secure client website that will allow them READONLY access to reports and results of server backups. I have had to use it a number of times to make our DBA's and application owners feel more secure with their system's backups and it works very well. There are numerous other features within TSMManager, but just the ones I've mentioned so far make it worth the price of purchase. If you feel like TSM is causing you the onset of early stage dementia check out TSMManager you'll be happy you did.