Comments on: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager & VMware VCB

By: Ching

Ching — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:37:44 +0000

Hi,

I am using 6.2.0.0 for server and 6.2.1.0 for client. ESX server is 4.0 update 1. But when I use backup vm command in dsmc it just says “ANS1184W The BACKUP VM command is not supported on this client”.

And, do you know if there’s any official documentation saying which versions of ESX server that TSM can support?

By: admin

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:54:23 +0000

Hi Ching,

I am not sure which version of TSM client are you using. If you are looking to use the backup vm command I have referenced in my article, you will need to use TSM Client 6.0 & above. Please note to use TSM Client 6.0 you don’t have to upgrade your TSM Server or ISC if you are running at 5.4 or 5.5. Furthermore, I confirm this method support both ESX 3.5 & 4.0 without any problem.

Hope this help,
Eiad

By: Ching

Ching — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:23:31 +0000

Hi, I was trying to implement a TSM backup solution to ESX server 4.0. There is no VCB proxy / vCenter server for the case. Before seeing this article, I was referring to another one from developerWorks (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/tivolistoragemanager/Using+IBM+Tivoli+Storage+Manager+V5.4+and+V5.5+for+backup+and+restore+operations+on+the+VMware+service+console), I can implement the solution mentioned in the above article. But I cannot use the backup vm command mentioned in your article. I have looked at some official documentation but seems there is no word on which version of ESX server that TSM can support. ESX server actually have a Linux-based core, what I know is the core is 32-bit for 3.5 or older versions, and 64-bit for 4.0 or later versions. I was wondering if the backup vm command is simply not supported on ESX server, or is only unsupported on 64-bit Linux like ESX 4.0.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:31:43 +0000

I am glad it did help.

By: veeresh

veeresh — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:12:58 +0000

Thank you very much for your article.
It help alot for me.

Thanks,
Veeresh.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:10:52 +0000

Hi Alex,

Sorry for the bit late reply, but it will all depend on the way your storage pools are setup.

If you want to send your virtual machine to a disk pool first, then you have to assign your client that backup VCB server to send the backup to diskpool & setup the next pool to be the tapepool. You should ask your TSM admin to handle that for you. In my opinion, I am not sure why you are trying to do it this was as you will be wasting double the space once on the VCB Server then again on the TSM Server Disk pool

Regards,
TSMGURU

By: admin

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:07:28 +0000

Hi Ron,

You should be able to backup Any virtual machine this way as it does the backup as images & does not care to what inside of it, though you might have to worry about the consistency of databases if any in case you are not running them on Windows or they don’t support VSS.

Enjoy,
TSMGuru

By: Alex Trepanier

Alex Trepanier — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:51:33 +0000

Great article !
I’m trying to make work VCB/TSM and TSM grap a tape directly, bypassing storage pool. I’m not the admin tsm… Do somebody know why tsm client do that ? The storage pool was not full when I made my vm backup.
TSM client 6.1, tsm server 5.4.3(aix), vcb 1.5 on windows. thanks !

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:56:15 +0000

So that I’m straight on this…1)can this back up linux ‘client’ that is defined as one of the host machines, or will this just back up windows host machines?

Thanks in adance..newbie to VMWARE.

By: jp

jp — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:51:06 +0000

hi,

unfortunately he didn’t change the management_class

we open a call to ibm and no solution

so we needed to change default managment_class not good