Tivoli Storage is a tool that is used to take the data backups and is one of the effective tool in the storage management.
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Author: Rajini Doguparti
Hi All,
This is Rajini Doguparti. I was working with IBM for around 3 and half years, as a Backup Storage administrator. When i joined IBM, it was a pride moment for me, as its everyones dream to work with such big companies. and i was all the more excited, since it was my first job. I enjoyed my tenure in IBM. I was assigned a project which they had just transitioned. Hence, i got a lot of opportunity to explore as it was a new project and we had to set up the complete environment for the storage. However, we were not the only team who could work on the storage administration. It also requires an OS (Operating System) team, a backup team, and a SAN (Storage Area Network) team and the main team being the Account team who would get us the work. There are many more teams that are involved, however the above mentioned teams being the ones with the critical work. And finally we started working on the set up and had come across many issues, infact many severity issues which we had overcome and an environment had been set up and was ready for functionality.
I had briefed about the work flow. Now let me introduce you to the Backup Administration Tool that is owned by IBM is TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager). This tool had its copyrights with IBM. These days the data is been treated with utmost importance. Every data has its own role to play. Hence, we as backup administrator would take care of the data. Hence, any company that would tie up with us would have to literally not care much about their data if they have saved it once. This tool is also known for the centralised storage, as it protects hundreds of client computers and is independent of the operating systems running on the client computers. It basically works for most of the Operating system.
The set up basically consist of a TSM server and clients. The server software would be installed on the server and TSM client software would be installed on all the clients computers. And once the softwares are installed, there is a basic setup that needs to be done in order to set up a communication between the server and the clients. Lets first discuss about the various components of the TSM server. The basic role of the server is to store the backup and archived data from the clients connected to it to different storage media. The media that it supports are Hard disks, Optical Disks (CDs) and the Tapes. This is called as a smart tool as it has its own database, which would track the data that it manages and various other information that is required for the data storage, which would be discussed further.
Let me explain the TSM server components in details, and the role played by each component:
- TSM Database : TSM saves all its information in the database like the files that are backed up, logical partitions of the clients. The database is called the heart of the TSM. It also holds information regarding the file name, file size, management class, copy groupd and location of the files in the TSM storage.
- Recovery Log : This is a permanent log, that stores the changes that are made to the database. This is because if the system outage occurs at that point, it would still have the changes that had occured to the database at that point. Even is log plays an important role, if it crosses its threshold, it needs to be backed up as well, else it might cause the TSM server to hang.
- Policy based management : Business policies are used to manage the clients data. They are first discussed with the client and once the deal is finalised, then the administrator creates these policies and store it in the database on the server. These are basically the business requirements, like how long do u want the data to be retained and how many copies do u want for the data. The Policy domain, policy set and the management classes are defined as per the requirements of the client.
- Storage Pools : These storage pools are nothing but the partitions on the hard disk of the server. They provide storage for the backed up data. Basically the partitions are made to the hard disks of the TSM servers and when the backup is kicked off as per the schedules defined, it is first stored in the disks, and then these are moved to tapes or CDs,depending on what the client prefers. Generally we store them on to the Tapes. The TSM server would be logically connected to a Tape library.Once the data is moved to the disks, it is then moved to the tapes that are present in the Tape library. and then they are also moved to off-site i.e to a safer place which is not prone to fire or any kind of damage. Hence, the clients data is been saved from natural disaster as well.
- Administrative Schedule : The administrators would define various schedules on the TSM server which would allow the automation of TSM server and client operations. There will be a component running on the TSM client machine as well, with which the client will provide the data to the TSM server when it approaches at the scheduled time. The server uses a unique name to identify each client instance. A password is also been set up to authenticate the communication between the server and the client.
Backup Archive Client : The clients computers are called the clients that sends data to the TSM server. AS discussed earlier we need to install the TSM backup – archive client on every machine that needs to the backed up.
You all must be thinking, what is the need of this software. Rather you could just save in on your computer and you are getting many more storage devices outside. Let me give you some basic points. Your storage device may not support all kinds of Operating systems. For any office, generally the data is so huge, that it cannot be stored on our own. Most important point being the storage device is fragile and there is a tendency of it breaking and you losing your data. But, as administrators we manage and save your data. And one most important point is that we can also retrieve the data you wanted depending on the policies that were discussed. If the data is within the policy dates, we can retrieve the data anytime you require. As, we keep 2 copies of each tape, one would be in the Tape library and the other one would be the off-site copy which is been discussed earlier.
Hence, friends i guess the article was interesting and helpful for you to understand the basic functionality of the TSM tool.
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Comments:
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No wonder IBM got such tool for backup storage. As IBM is one of the big boys in IT.
Interesting article btw.
-Brian