IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Lower storage cost through intelligent hierarchy of storage

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager implements a hierarchy of lower-cost storage that can include low-cost disk systems, such as Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA), automated tape systems and optical libraries. As an added benefit, the data can be compressed and encrypted on its way into the hierarchy. As soon as the data is in the hierarchy, it can be seamlessly and automatically moved from one type of storage to another.

Advanced Application Protection
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Mail, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Databases and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Enterprise Resource Planning are designed to perform online backups of databases and applications. These backups are sent to the hierarchy of storage.

Direct to disk
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager maximizes your backup window, and minimizes your restore time by giving clients the option to back up initially to a disk storage pool on the Storage Manager server. Backing up to disk means the number of clients backing up at the same time is not gated by how many tape drives you have. Once clients' data is backed up to the disk storage pools, policies automate the migration onto tape or optical. Before migrating out to tape, each client's data is grouped together so it is written in an organized fashion out to tape or optical, thus allowing for faster restores. Tivoli Storage Manager's robust disk-to-disk backup has been available since its first release. This robust functionality allows for multiple disk volumes to be virtualized into one large volume and it provides automatic migration to the next storage pool based on high and low thresholds and the age of the file.

Collocation
Collocation takes the grouping of individual clients' data a step further by allowing you to specify that the data from a group of clients, a particular client or a particular file system should reside on their own tape or set of tapes. By collocating a client's data you expedite restores, as fewer tapes have to be mounted, less tape positioning has to occur and contention for tapes during simultaneous data restores will not occur.

Reclamation
Expiring files that reside on tape create dead space, which cannot be rewritten, wasting valuable tape space and causing restores to have to be re-positioned over that space. Tivoli Storage Manager has an easy solution to this—reclamation. Reclamation is designed to be automatically controlled based on polices you set up. As soon as a tape has a certain percentage of dead space on it, the remaining unexpired files are moved to other tape volumes. The resulting empty tapes are then reused for new data—enabling you to make more efficient use of your tape capacity and helping to improve your restore times.

Offsite copies
Disasters that wipe out your entire IT center can happen. Tapes break or get misplaced. To protect against these scenarios, Tivoli Storage Manager is designed to allow you to create, manually or using schedules, copies of your backed-up data. You can then take these copies offsite to protect your backups. Or you can have Tivoli Storage Manager send them automatically over the network to another Tivoli Storage Manager server. Tivoli Storage Manager continues to track the offsite volumes' content, so should a tape need to be brought back onsite because the original tape failed, or because the data on it has expired, Tivoli Storage Manager is designed to automatically provide the necessary information to the administrator.

Migration to new technology
The hierarchy of storage also helps manage the process of automatically moving data to newer media types when current media becomes obsolete or ineffective. This often happens when long-term archive data outlives a particular tape technology.