TSM Upcoming Events and Live Technical Training

Here are some events that you might find worthwhile. If you don't receive the technical information updates from IBM then check out the FAQ page. If you'd like to sign up for daily/weekly notifications concerning TSM then access IBM's "My Notifications." 

• 19 May 2010 - TSM and Electronic Vaulting for Disaster Recovery
• 27 May 2010 - Implementation and Use of TSM Client/Server Data De-duplication with TSM 6.2
• 08 June 2010 - Encryption and Security with TSM Version 6
• 13 June 2010 - TSM V6.2 Automatic Client Deployment

NetbackupExpert?

Once again licensing time has arrived and Symantec is giving away Netbackup. IBM's pricing model makes it hard to justify staying with TSM when Symantec is pricing their product sooooo low. Sure I can pull out graphs, reports, and pretty little charts to try and help management understand the difference, but let's face it, it all comes down to the bottom line. IBM doesn't like to budge on pricing and Symantec has nothing to lose. Anyone have some Netbackup training materials I can borrow?

Obstacles Upgrading to 6.1

I have a server with 8 instances of TSM running on it. The first instance is the library controller and the other seven are production instances. So the problem has been how to best reconfigure everything for TSM 6.1 since IBM says it's best not to run multiple instances on the same server unless they are in their own LPAR. So what I have been trying to figure out is how best to migrate to 6.1 with the least impact. I figure I will need to merge the 7 production instances into 3 or 4, but then what would be the best procedure for dividing up the hardware (i.e. NICs and HBA's) for the other LPARs. Any suggestions?

Tivoli Storage Manager v6.2 is coming in March

Tivoli Storage Manager v6.2

Finally! MySQL backups with TSM

Computer Technology Review has an announcement from Zmanda stating they are releasing a TSM backup agent (Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL). The ZRM-TSM agent is available immediately. You can read the full article here. Those of you who have been asking for a TDP for MySQL, the wait is over.

Update: Weird Volhist Records (Part Two)

IBM did get back to me about my library manager/library client volume history devclass issue and I found it interesting how development handled it. Initially IBM support said the following:

Our server development has confirmed with our design, it is possible that the remote volhist entry can be different. Development believe this is their design. However, the existing document did not document this clearly. They agreed to open a Doc. APAR to properly document this for command query volhist.

In other words they felt that no action was needed other than to document that this possible occurrence within the TSM Admin and Reference guides. So I asked it be escalated since it is definitely a flaw and finally heard back from support and was told the following:

They agree what you observed or reported in this case is incorrect even though it does not cause any function lose. They have agreed to take the APAR IC65048 as a defect ( instead of Document ). However, this APAR would take a big code change to "fix" this issue and after first evaluate, they will not be able to deliver a fix in the service stream. They request to open a DCR ( design change record ) so development can make this change on a release boundary so that there is sufficient testing for a code change.

So it looks like IBM will eventually fix this. Thanks to IBM support for helping me get development to at least go beyond the Doc. APAR.

Data Loss Top 10

Ontrack, which handles data recovery, compiled a list of the strangest reasons data was lost. You can read their list here. I remember when I was teaching TSM some students had some of the craziest stories for data loss (many were disgruntled employee stories).

One story I heard from a student occurred when a manager was stupid enough to fire an employee, but require him to work the rest of the week if he wanted his pay. So the employee worked the rest of the week and on his way out (unescorted) he went into the server room and proceeded to urinate into the mainframe. Supposedly he shorted out the mainframe and caused all kind of havoc. If you have a story you'd like to share feel free to leave it in the comments section.