Measuring backup and archive capacity in primary server storage pools

NOTE: This technote does not apply to version 8.1. This only applies to the versions listed to the right.

Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery Archive Option is a bundle of Tivoli Storage Manager products that offers simplified pricing and licensing with a tiered per-terabyte (TB) metric. You can install as many of the individual products as needed for your environment. There is no per-server, per-installation or processor value unit (PVU) charge; you are only charged for the TB that is stored in Tivoli Storage Manager primary storage pools and FastBack repositories.

Overview

Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery Archive Option delivers a comprehensive set of data protection capabilities such as:

 

• Massive scalability with broad platform support
• Target-side and source-side data deduplication
• Advanced support for virtual environment protection
• Online, consistent, and centralized data protection for:
• Databases
• mySAP/SAP R3 environments
• Email servers running IBM Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange
• Item-level recovery of Microsoft Exchange email objects
• LAN-free backup and restore operations that utilizes the SAN to remove data transfer from the LAN, providing high-performance backup and restore processing while helping to minimize network traffic
• File-system and application-aware snapshots and Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
• Bare machine recovery for Microsoft Windows and Linux servers, for servers that are already protected with Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack
• Hierarchical storage management for Unix and Linux systems

The following products comprise Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery with archive option solution:

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Extended Edition: Use this product for highly-scalable, enterprise-class backup, restore, and archive processing, and disaster recovery
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Databases: Use this product for nondisruptive protection of Oracle and Microsoft SQL data
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Enterprise Resource Planning: Use this product to protect vital SAP R/3 system data more efficiently, consistently and reliably
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Mail: Use this product to secure Lotus Domino and Exchange data, and to provide granular restore processing Exchange objects
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Storage Area Networks: Use this product to maximize storage network connections for Tivoli Storage Manager servers and client computers
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Space Management: Use this product to move inactive data to reclaim online disk space
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments: Use this product to protect and provide flexible recovery of VMware environments
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack: Use this product to provide advanced data protection and near-instant recovery for Windows and Linux servers
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Bare Machine Recovery: Use this product to restore a Windows or Linux Server Operating System volume within an hour
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack for Microsoft Exchange: Use this product for fast and easy recovery of individual e-mail objects

For additional information about the Suite for Unified Recovery:
 

Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery V6.3 Information Portal http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27023205

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Please refer to the FAQ technote for hints, tips, guidance for performing a capacity measurement. The FAQ technote is: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21656476.

 

Measuring capacity

Administrative macro commands are available to help you measure TB stored in Tivoli Storage Manager Primary Storage Pools.

There are also instructions available that explain how to us the Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack graphical user interface to help you measure TB stored in Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack Repositories

Measuring primary storage-pool capacity in Tivoli Storage Manager

The administrative macro command that you can use to measure TB data stored in primary storage-pools for a version 6.3 TSM server is called tsm_ar_tb_cap_v63.macro. Note that this version of the macro considers TSM server to server replication and adjusts the capacity measurement for the target server based on this exclusion. The macro can be downloaded from the following link. Depending upon the browser being used, the macro may be opened directly in the browser, in which case you should save it locally. Alternatively, the macro may have been downloaded to the download directory or folder. The instructions for running the macro are documented in the next section in this technote. See the section entitled: "How to use the Administrative Macro".

 

ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/capacity_measurement_tools/tsm_ar_tb_cap_v63.macro

The administrative macro for measuring SUR Archive for servers at version 7.1.3 and higher (such as 7.1.4) is called tsm_ar_tb_cap_v713.macro. The macro can be downloaded from the following link.

ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/capacity_measurement_tools/tsm_ar_tb_cap_v713.macro


For each of the macros referenced above and depending upon the browser being used, the macro may be opened directly in the browser, in which case you should save it locally. Alternatively, the macro may have been downloaded to the download directory or folder. The instructions for running the macro are documented in the next section in this technote. See the section entitled: "How to use the Administrative Macro".

The Administrative macro command looks at all storage pools that are designated as primary storage pools, calculates the number of TB in each pool, and sums up the results.

How to use the Administrative macro

The Administrative macro is executed using a Tivoli Storage Manager command line administrative client. To execute the administrative macro, do the following:

 

1. Download the appropriate Administrative macro. The tsm_ar_tb_cap_v63.macro is used to measure capacity for a version 6.3 server.
2. The macro should be run from a Microsoft Windows, Unix, or Linux workstation where the Tivoli Storage Manager command line administrative client is installed.
3. Open a command window on the machine where the macro will be run.
   
   For Microsoft Windows, open a "Command Prompt" command window. For example, this can typically be found from Start Programs->Accessories->Command Window.
   
   For Unix or Linux, there are many ways to accomplish this. For example, if you are using telnet or scp through Putty to access the machine, you can run the command in step 4 from there. Alternatively, you could start an xTerm or other terminal window and run it from there as well.
4. From an operating system command window such as a Windows "Command Prompt" or an xTerm, invoke the Tivoli Storage Manager command line administrative client as follows:
   
   dsmadmc -id=<yourid> -password=<yourpassword> -dataonly=yes -outfile=<capacity_file_name> macro <macro_name>
   
   The input parameters that must be specified by the administrator when this is executed are the items enclosed in '<' and '>' respectively. The specific input parameters are:
   
   <yourid> - This is the administrative user id that will be used to connect to the server.
   <yourpassword> - This is the password for the administrative user id that will be used to connect to the server.
   <capacity_file_name> - The results from the macro will be stored to this file. Select an appropriate file name use. For example, consider using the server name such as "server1.capacity".
   <macro_name> - The name of the macro to be run which is tsm_ar_tb_cap_v63.macro.
5. The values from "Section 1" and "Section 2" should be provided to your IBM sales representative to determine pricing information for the Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery with Archive Option.
6. Repeat step 2 for each server. To run this for other servers, update <yourid>, <yourpassword>, <capacity_file_name>, and <macro_name> accordingly. Also consider using the "-server=<servername>" parameter when invoking dsmadmc and use that to control which server this is being run against.

Notes about use and running of the capacity measurement macro:

• Run the macro as described in step 4.
• The macro is a command macro intended to be run from the TSM command line administrative client as shown.
• Do not try to run this as a TSM script, such as using the "RUN <name here>" command.
• Do not start the command line administrative client and try to invoke it from within a running client. The output formatting as controlled by the "-dataonly=yes" flag is important to how this is run. Running the macro differently than as shown can result in failures or a capacity report that is difficult to read because it is not formatted correctly.

How data is measured

The Administrative macro commands use the following rules when measuring data:

· Measures the amount of deduplicated data in a deduplicated primary storage pool, where Tivoli Storage Manager has deduplicated data. This measurement shows the cost efficiency of using Tivoli Storage Manager data deduplication when the number of TB in primary storage pools is reduced.
· Excludes copy pool and active data pools. These are copies of primary storage pools and not measured for capacity reporting purposes.
· Excludes data from Tivoli Storage Manager HSM for Windows and Tivoli Storage Manager for SharePoint. These OEM products are sold on a Processor Value Unit (PVU) basis and are not included in the Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery.
· Measures virtual volume source data (excluding target data). TSM allows a server (a source server) to store the results of database backups, export operations, storage pool operations, and a DRM PREPARE command on another TSM server (a target server). The data is stored as virtual volumes. When querying TSM, virtual volume data appears in primary storage pools in both the target and the source server. The data that is stored on the target server is a Disaster Recovery (DR) copy of data and is not measured.
· Excludes data replicated by FastBack to Tivoli Storage Manager and excludes data that was backed up from a FastBack server using a Tivoli Storage Manager client. This data represents a copy of data on the FastBack server that is already measured.
· Excludes other duplicated data. Other duplicated data represents data that is reported in primary storage pools, which is a copy of data that is already stored by other means. For example, the table of contents for a backup set is stored in a primary storage pool. The table of contents is metadata that describes the data on a backup set so this data is excluded from the measurement.
· Excludes data from client nodes configured as REPL_MODE of RECEIVE or SYNCRECEIVE on the target server where TSM is configured to perform server to server replication.
· Archive data that resides on tape or a virtual tape library (VTL) is counted as archive. Archive data that resides in a primary storage pool of a device type other than tape or VTL is counted as primary (non-archival) capacity.
· Data from Data Protection for ERP is counted as primary capacity (in section 1 of the capacity report that the macro generates) regardless of what kind of primary storage pool it resides in.

NOTE: If you have a TSM 6.3 server that was upgraded from V6.1 or V6.2 and server deduplication or client deduplication are being used, you may be affected by code defects that cause the occupancy values to be incorrect. The following two APAR's (below) should be reviewed to determine if these apply to your environment. If one or the other does apply to your environment, apply the corresponding server fix-pack or patch containing the fix for this APAR along with performing any additional corrective actions described in the APAR's or any corresponding techdocs that reference these APARs. After these fixes have been applied and corrective actions performed, the capacity values used for the measurement will no longer be affected by these.

IC73005 - Available, or targeted to be available, in fix pack level 6.2.3
IC73592 – Available, or targeted to be available, in fix packs 6.1.5, 6.2.3 and patch level 6.2.2.3

Tip: The Administrative macro command is designed to report the in-use primary storage pool capacity on the TSM server. The results from the Tivoli Storage Manager administrative macro commands might differ from other QUERY command output, in particular the output from the QUERY AUDITOCC command. The differences in reported values between different commands is expected and is caused by differences in the data from the database being reported on and differences in the algorithms being used to derive this data. And for servers at 7.1.3 and higher, the value as reported may different from the SUR occupancy information shown in QUERY STATUS or SELECT ... FROM STATUS.