Storage Manager

Reduced network bandwidth through intelligent data movement

Tivoli Storage Manager includes a number of intelligent data-movement capabilities to save tapes, processing cycles and network bandwidth—and to help decrease backup and restore times.

Progressive backup

• IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

The intelligent Progressive Incremental backup strategy is used by default. Only files that have changed or that are new are backed up, thereby eliminating unnecessary data transfers that rob your network and CPUs of vital power and productivity. Progressive backup does away with the need to do wasteful full incremental backups, and gives you faster restores because it only needs to restore the version of the file requested. Progressive backup needs to back up less data, thus saving you network bandwidth, tapes and management overhead.

Sub-file backup
Sub-file backup fundamentally changes the way data may be transferred throughout the enterprise. Sub-file backup transfers data by byte, block, or file based on data size. This technology supports a variety of connectivity strategies, including LANs, WANs, SANs, Internet and dial-up connections. This application is designed for mobile computer users and other users with a need to minimize the amount of data transmitted over a network.

Mobile user data protection is enhanced with support for sub-file level backup and encryption of data before it is transmitted over the network. With Storage Manager Progressive Backup Methodology, only files that have changed are candidates to be backed up, therefore, eliminating unnecessary data transfers that rob your network and CPUs of vital power and productivity. With sub-file backup, the backup-archive client dynamically determines the most efficient approach for creating backup copies, based on changed bytes, changed blocks or changed files, delivering improved backup performance even over dial-up connections. With encryption, the backups being sent over the public phone lines are secure, as are the files being stored on your Storage Manager server.

A file backed up using sub-file backup initially sends a reference file to the Storage Manager. Subsequent backups for that file send a delta file, which consists of the changed data from the reference copy.

A restore operation reconstructs the file on the Storage Manager client using the reference file and the delta file that represents the point in time for the restore request.

Backup sets / Rapid Recovery
Rapid Recovery provides the ability to create a backup set which consolidates a client's files onto a set of media that is portable and may be directly readable by the clients system for fast, LAN-free (non-networked) restore operations. The portable backup set, which is synthesized from existing backups, is tracked by the Storage Manager server. The portable backup sets can be copied to numerous types of media for Windows, AIX®, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, NetWare and Linux backup-archive client platforms. Storage Manager backup-archive clients can directly restore data from the backup media set using standard operating system device drivers. The Storage Manager server is NOT required to restore the data and no data is pulled over the network.

Dynamic multi-threaded transfer
Improves backup and restore rates by transparently optimizing the number of Storage Manager sessions based upon available system resources. Customer and in-house tests have demonstrated a 2 to 3 times performance improvement over single-threaded sessions.

Resilient backup and restore
Only Storage Manager gives you the ability to restart from where you left off if backups or restores are interrupted. This saves you critical time by not having to start a backup or restore all over again.

Journal-based backup
Utilizes Windows' change journal to rapidly back up the changed or new files. This improves overall incremental backup performance with journal-based backups for the Windows clients.

Non-disruptive online image backup and restore
For instances in which speed is more important than individual file restores, image backups complement progressive incremental backups to provide full file system backup and restores.

Compression
Clients can choose to have their data compressed prior to being sent to the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager server. This helps to conserve bandwidth.

Encryption
Worried about people reading your data when it is transferred across the network? The UNIX, Netware and Windows Storage Manager clients provide 128 bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). They allow for the files that will be backed up or archived to be encrypted before being sent to the Storage Manager server. Encryption is now also available for applications using the Tivoli Storage Manager API, which includes the Tivoli Storage Manager Data Protection Clients for applications and databases.

Application program interfaces (API)
Enable applications to access a Storage Manager server for backup, archive, or specialized services. Our free open API allows for critical online backup services to data-intensive applications.

DB2® online backup
IBM DB2, DB2 Parallel Edition (DB2PE), and DB2 Universal Database (UDB) can be backed up to the Storage Manager server using the functions provided in the Storage Manager API. DB2 makes use of our client API for backup and recovery without additional software or licensing. In fact, DB2 was an early adaptor of Storage Manager's API methodology.

Informix® online backup
IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) can be backed up to the Storage Manager server using the functions provided in the Storage Manager API. Informix makes use of our client API for backup and recovery without additional software or licensing.