TSM - IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Guru Blog

Each component of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager has its system & Software requirements. Below I am bringing your attention to the requirements of each component. Please visit IBM website for the latest requirements for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Components as its an always updated document.

System Requirement & Supported Platforms for IBM Tivoli TSM Server

IBM TSM Server System Requirements:

IBM Tivoli Storage manager Server requirements are specific to the operating system & architect it will run on. Below are the requirements for the most commonly used platforms.

OK, OK, you had just received your IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 CDs. I can guess, ah you are asking what are you going to do with all these CDs. Guess what!! You might only need 3 of them, or might need all of them depending on the enviornment you have. IBM tend to ship you all the CDs at once, and leave it up to you to use what you have licensed. Below is the list of CDs you should recieve with your IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Package.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Server

• Operational Reporting
• Administration Center
• Linux Server
• HP-UX Server
• Solaris Server
• Windows Server
• AIX Server

Finally Day two is ready to be published. I know quite few readers were waiting for it. The surprise we have promised about that our tutorial from Day 3 on will include videos of the steps we used in the installation and configuration. We are sorry that the video quality is not too high & does not include sound, but that is how much efforts our team is able to handle at the moment. We are considering to release a new set of video & re-clean up the whole tutorial after finishing it. So stay tuned.

VMware VMs image level backup using TSM was not straight forward process till TSM 5.5. Up to version 5.4, you needed to run into all kind of pre & post backup scripts to backup your virtual machines using VCB & TSM. Integrating TSM & VCB was a hassle, & most companies were running after third party solutions to intermediate the integration (ex: vRanger, ESXpress, & so on). In TSM 5.5, the situation got a lot better as IBM introduced the backup vm command which canceled the need for the nasty post & pre-script commands. Though till TSM 6.0 there was no GUI for backing up virtual machines using VCB in TSM. The good news in TSM 6.0 the integration of TSM & VCB has got to be quite easy and effective. In addition, for all of you out there who is not ready to upgrade just yet I have a very good news for you. The good news is that you can use the TSM 6.0 client with your old 5.4 & 5.5 and even maybe older version of TSM, so you don’t have to upgrade your TSM Server to get the benefit of the new TSM Client features. The example below in fact is using IBM TSM 6.0 client with TSM Server 5.5.

Backing up virutal machines running on VMware ESX as images is a rising trend. As ESXRanger is one of the leading software in backing up ESX VMs as images, I have decided to cover the best practices for ESXRanger Quiescing & VSS setting when backing up virtual machines. There is many cautions that you need to follow specially when backing up database virtual machines as images to get consistent images.

Before reinventing the wheel I searched around to see how good is the coverage of this topic over the internet, I found the below guide written by the VirtualizationTeam.com with a great coverage of the topic. I thought it will be very useful to share it with my readers, as plenty of TSM users have purchased vRanger & integrated it with their TSM Solution, to get an easier way to backup VMs. I thought I will spread the guide, before you fall in the pitfall of not following best practices when doing VMs backup. Below is the guide:

IBM TSM 5.5 come with three license schema as below:

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 Basic Version requires tsmbasic.lic license file

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 Extended Edition requires tsmee.lic license file

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 Retention Edition requires dataret.lic licesne file.

Note:  License can’t be mixed at the site level.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is a backup & archive solution, so if you are familiar with backup solutions you will discover that TSM will have to be capable of performing four main functions: backup, restore, archive, and retrive. Although these concepts seem easy to most, many new admins have a hard time distinguishing between backup & archive. As I am trying to cover every one, below you will find a brief of each as being defined by IBM Tivoli Team.

Backup: Creates a copy of a file to protect against the operational loss of destruction of that file. Customers control backups by defining the backup frequency and number of versions.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Components is the first section of three section of the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Introduction (Day1). In this section we will cover up IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Components.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager have 9 Components. Six of these components reside on the TSM Server it self & another 3 are a part of the solution, but does not reside on the TSM Server. The first Six components in the list below are the TSM Components which reside on the TSM Server, where the last 3 components which has been colored in red are components which does not reside on the TSM Server.

TSM Components:

1. Administrative Interface
2. Tivoli Storage Manager Server
3. Scheduler

As its your first day in our TSM School, please choose your seat and tighten your belt and be ready. Today we will introduce you to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager & its primary functions.

TSM is the primary backup & data management solution used into the enterprise today. TSM has a tough competition in the SMB mainly due to its cost, as its an enterprise solution. In the other hand, its a clear winner when it come to the enterprise for many reasons just summarizing few of them below:

1- TSM Can easily scale up to thousands of nodes without any problem. It has been designed with enterprise scalability in mind. Most other backup solutions fail to scale up after couple of hundreds of nodes, but with TSM scalability is a major advantage.

For those who want to get certified on IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, below is the Certification & Training Path for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 directly from IBM. So start up your trip today toward being certified :).

tsm Certification Path

OK, you are not ready for the certification & can’t afford paying for the official IBM courses you can start by reading our rich tutorials for free today, though nothing can be as good as the official course so keep it in mind. Our tutorial has been established as many people are finding difficulties in learning or finding a good resource for TSM. So we hoped that we can help the words of this great product.