We suggest you read the following Article on Collocation before reading this Article –> Read Here

As noted in the article on collocation. The main problems you will come across with collocation is running out of scratch tapes andor a large number of tapes in a filling status. The main cause of this is having a storage pool with a collocation method of Group and then having no collocation groups or nodes not in collocation groups.

Using TSM Studio go to the Trouble Shooting category and open the Nodes not in Collocation Group dataview.

To Add a Node(s) to a Group simply right click the select Add to A Group

After putting all your nodes in a group, You will now need to move the data off the current tapes so that TSM can collocate the nodes and their data.

There are a number of ways to do this and here are two of them

1. To do this use the Move Data command on each tape and move the data back to the primary disk pool so that the migration process can move the data back to tape using the collocation you specified.

2. Or use the Move Data command to move the data to the same storage pool as the tape is already in, TSM will then move the data from the selected tape and collocate the data with nodes from the same group on other tapes.

Using TSM Studio to run the move data command. Open the Volumes Dataview from the Libraries and Volumes category Right Click on the Tape and Choose Move Data

Choose the Storage Pool to move the data to

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Firstly for the TSM Instance to be able to capture information about restored files the following option must be enabled in the dsmserv.opt and the TSM instance restarted

REPORTRETRIEVE   Yes

Then in TSM Studio you can use the Client Node–>Show Restored Files dataview to show restored file for a given date rangle

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In most of the TSM Studio dataviews there is an option to Export data to XML

This XML can be loaded back into TSM Studio at any time without having a connection to a TSM Server using the Tools–>Load Dataview from XML Option

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The Node (Backup, Restore, Archive and Retrieve ) Statistics dataviews in TSM Studio source their data from the TSM Server Activity Log.

The format of the numbers in the Activity Log is dependent on the regional and TSM Client settings on the Client Node so it is possible that there may a number of different number formats stored in the Activity Log. This does cause issues for TSM Studio when trying to determine which number system is being used and converting to numbers. To address this issue TSM Studio 2.9.3.5 has added configuration options to set defaults and overrides for the different number systems.

Firstly the default setting which all be used for all Client Nodes data can be set using the Settings–>Client Node Statistics Settings–>Client Node Statistics Defaults as shown here

In the settings dialog specify the default values used for the decimal point and thousands separator.

Use the Client Node Statistics Overrides to change this setting for individual Client Nodes

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If SQL Server is running on the same Server as the TSM Studio Server service then we recommend 12GB of memory as a minimum to ensure the healthy running on TSM Studio Server.

By default SQL Server will be configured to use all available memory this will need to be changed so that there is enough free memory for  TSM Studio Server to function. It is recommended  that SQL Server be given 4GB of memory and the other 8GB is left available for TSM Studio Server.

To change the default memory settings in SQL Server. Start up SQL Server Management Server right click on the server and select properties

Select Memory and then enter 4096 into the Maximum server memory field

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In TSM Studio Server 2.9.011 and above there are a number of added enhancements to help tune TSM Studio for you environment.

The first area to check is on the Concurrency Tab of the TSM Studio Server properties dialog which can be accessed from Configuration–>Properties as shown here



 

The main setting to check here are Concurrent Reports and Concurrent Collector Threads. Report creation can consume large amount of memory so it is recommended to keep this number low.



Also some of the collections can consume a large amount of transaction log space especially the activity log collector.  Each collector  can be individually tuned.  Goto Configuration->Collection schedules and edit the Activity Log collector and change the Concurrent Collectors to a small number (less than 5 )



Also check out the below link for SQL Server memory settings


https://www.spiritsoftware.biz/knowledgebase/microsoft-sql-…-studio-server

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As of TSM Studio Server version 2.9.1.0 security has been tightened up and no longer stores any security information in the registry.

The default logon to TSM Studio Server is now admin with a default password of password, (Domain field should be blank otherwise TSM Studio Server will assume it is a windows userid).

We strongly advise changing the admin password using the following procedure.

To change the password for the inbuilt admin userid use the Security–>Change Admin Password

Security in TSM Studio Server is now defined by assigning role(s) and Windows groups to a TSM Studio Server security group.

The TSM Studio Server security system will automatically create a group named Admins that has access to all functions in TSM Studio Server, the first time it is loaded it will look for the old group definitions in the registry and load them into this group otherwise it will populate with following default groups Administrators, Domains Admins and TSMStudioAdmins.

Also two roles will be created, one called Administrators which is assigned to the Admins Server group and one called Operational Report Viewer for allowing access to the Operational Report Viewer.

To access TSM Studio Server Groups select Security–>Groups

To modify the Admins Group Double Click or select edit from the Toolbar

Add Windows Group that should have admin access to TSM Studio Server, One Group per line

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Alternate Row BackColor Example

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This will display Line Numbers as shown below

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If you find that it takes upwards of 30 seconds of  establish a session to the TSM Server from the Admin CLI (dsmadmc.exe). It maybe because your TSM server is unable to resolve the clients name or the TSM Server is unable to communicate with any DNS Servers.

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TSM has the ability to encrypt data at the client node before sending the data to the TSM server. There are two methods that are available

1. Transparent Encryption

• This is where the encryption key is managed by and stored on the TSM server
• If the client node needs to be rebuilt data can be easily restored
• Data can be restored back to any node that is allowed to impersonate the original node

2. Client Side Encryption

• This is where the encryption key is manually managed and stored on the client using an encryption password
• More secure as data can only be restored if the encryption password is known
• If the password is lost then the data cannot be restored

To enable encryption at the client there are two parameters for setting up and a couple of include and exclude statements for selecting or excluding which files are to be encrypted.

ENCRYPTKEY

The ENCRYPTKEY option is used to choose either transparent encryption or client-side encryption. For client-side encryption there are two options to choose from

ENCRYPTKEY=SAVE  ( Client-Side )

This option will prompt for an encryption password on the initial backup and then store this password in the password file. The password will be retrieved from this file for each subsequent backup.

ENCRYPTKEY=PROMPT ( Client-Side)

This option will prompt for an encryption password for each backup and restore. To be able to restore the data the same password that was using when backing the data up will be required

ENCRYPTION=GENERATE (Transparent)

This option will have TSM generate an encryption key password which is stored on the TSM server and managed by the TSM server.

 ENCRYPTIONTYPE

The ENCRYPTIONTYPE parameter selects what type of encryption is used either DES56 or AES128 with the AES128 algorithm being the stronger of the two

Next is to select which file or directories to include in the backup

use the include.encrypt statement to include files and directories to be encrypted and takes the same format as any other include statement
use the exclude.encrypt statement to exclude files and directories to be encrypted and takes the same format as any other exclude statement

example

ENCRYPTKEY=GENERATE
ENCRYPTIONTYPE=AES256
INCLUDE.ENCRYPT /home/…/
EXCLUDE.ENCRYPT /home/…/test.fil
INCLUDE.ENCRYPT  C:…*
EXCLUDE.ENCRYPT  C:windows…*

When using the client-side encryption the encryption passwords are stored in the TSM.PWD files in unix or in the registry for windows

I would recommended using transparent encryption unless you have a specific requirement not to.

I am option asked how to prove that the data is encrypted. There is no way to do this with TSM and they only way to do this is use a network packet tracing tool such as wireshark. If you are interested on how to do this just send me an email  gelliott@spiritsoftware.biz

For more information see Chapter 5 of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager: Building a Secure Environment

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The following command will show all unique management classes used by a node

SELECT DISTINCT(CLASS_NAME) FROM BACKUPS WHERE NODE_NAME = ‘XXXXXX’

to see only management classes used on directories use

SELECT DISTINCT(CLASS_NAME) FROM BACKUPS WHERE NODE_NAME = ‘XXXXXX’ AND TYPE = ‘DIR’

to see only management classes used on files use

SELECT DISTINCT(CLASS_NAME) FROM BACKUPS WHERE NODE_NAME = ‘XXXXXX’ AND TYPE = ‘FILE’

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In Windows you can use the Preview Include-Exclude option in the backup client.

Start the backup client and go to the utilities menu and select Preview Include-Exclude

In the Preview Include-Exclude Dialog, choose the type either Backup or Archive ( Your normal nightly jobs will usually be of type backup )

Choose either to just show included files, excluded files or both. This information is ascertained from settings in your dsm.opt file

Choose  the directories and files to be reported on. If you have a large file system and you choose a top level directory this command may take a long time to run and produce a large output file

Lastly choose the output file and select ok

When the task finishes open the output file with notepad and it will look as follows with the files on the left and the management class on the left hand side

The same preview include-exclude can be achieved with the backup-archive command line in both unix and windows as follows.  This example will produce the same out as above

the -traverse=y tells the backup-archive client to include subdirectories

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This article describes installation and configuration of the TSM Scheduler Service on windows. The TSM Scheduler service is used by the TSM Scheduling Services to automate client node backups.

I am using the version 6 client for these examples, even though the screens look different it is still the same process for the version 5 clients

After installing the Windows Backup Archive client start the Backup-Archive GUI go to the Utilities–>Setup Wizard

Select Next

Select Next on TSM Schedule Wizard Screen

Choose Install a new or additional scheduler

Choose a Name for the Service. This the name you will in the Windows Services Manager

This is what you will see in Windows Service Manager

Choose an options file to be associated with this TSM Scheduler Service. It is possible to run multiple TSM Scheduler Service’s using different option files

Choose the node name for this TSM Service. Again it is possible to use a different node name for each TSM Scheduler Service and input the password. This node name will need to be registered on the TSM Server or the service will not start.

Choose the userid that the service will start as.  This userid will need to have access to all the files it must backup or be a member of the backup operators group in windows

Choose the location for the scheduler service log files

NOTE:  Some of these options are stored with the TSM Scheduler service and not in the options file and will override the option file settings. These values are stored in the registry at the following location

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTSM Client SchedulerParameters     (replace TSM Client Scheduler with the name you used when installing the service )

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For TSM version 5

SELECT * FROM NODES WHERE NODE_NAME NOT IN ( SELECT NODE_NAME FROM COLLOCGROUP WHERE NODE_NAME IS NOT NULL )

For TSM version 6 and above

SELECT * FROM NODESVIEW WHERE NODE_NAME NOT IN ( SELECT NODE_NAME FROM COLLOCGROUP WHERE NODE_NAME IS NOT NULL )

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TSM v6 and Above

SELECT NODE_NAME FROM NODESVIEW WHERE NODE_NAME NOT IN (SELECT NODE_NAME FROM OCCUPANCY)

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For TSM v 5

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM NODES

For TSM v6 and above

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM NODESVIEW

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SELECT DOMAIN_NAME,SCHEDULE_NAME,COUNT(NODE_NAME) AS NUMBER_OF_NODES FROM ASSOCIATIONS GROUP BY DOMAIN_NAME,SCHEDULE_NAME

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SELECT DISTINCT NODE_NAME, CLASS_NAME FROM BACKUPS WHERE NODE_NAME=’XXXXX’

Replace XXXXX with your node name

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