Because TSM Studio saves the last known position of the window, it is possible that if the resolution changes, multiple screens were used or the window was accidently dragged off the screen that the TSM Studio is now on a part of the Window Screen that is not visible. To resolve this issue use ALT+CTRL+W to reset the position of the window

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The Mount Retention parameter specifies how long to keep a tape in a tape drive after it has finished being used. By default the value of this parameter is set to 60 minutes. So a tape will stay in the drive for 1 hour after it is finished with.

Why?  The main reason for having this parameter high is that a tape mount is a relatively expensive operation in that is can take some time for a tape library to unmount and mount a tape, so if the same tape is likely to be used again in the near future it will not need to re-mounted if it is already in the tape drive thus saving time either for backup or restore tasks. If you have a shared library environment or do not have a lot of drives then I recommend you bring this value right down to around 5 mins ( or even 1 minute if tape drive contention is a big issue ). With Virtual Tape Libraries tape mounts operations are extremely fast and high mount retention values are actually detrimental to the performance of the system. In this case the mount retention parameter should be set to 1 minute. The mount retention parameter is defined in a device class. Device Classes are defined per Tape Library and each device class affects all the drives in the library it is defined with.

To change the Mount Retention parameter using the command line update devclass device_class_name MOUNTRETENTION=minutes   where device_class_name is the name of the device class minutes is the number of minutes to keep the tape in the drive after it is finished being used

To change the Mount Retention parameter using TSM Studio Firstly open the Device Classes dataview in the Configuration Category and double click to open the dataview

Find the Library Column and locate the library that you wish to change

Select this row and right click to bring up the context menu for this object and select Change Mount Retention

Choose the Mount Retention Value and press Enter to Change

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TSM uses a hierarchy of Storage Pools to “migrate” or move data from one type of storage to another or to the same type of storage.

How does Migration work?

There are a couple of parameters that need to be setup to facilitate migration. The first is to setup the “Next Storage Pool” parameter, this defines which pool the data will “migrate” to from the current pool.

To see how this is currently defined on your storage pools

Run the following Admin CLI Command

QUERY STGPOOL F=D and look at the “Next Storage Pool” field

In TSM Studio open the Storage Pools Dataview from the Storage category and check out the NextStgPool column

 To change the Next Storage Pool from the Admin CLI

 UPDATE STGPOOL stgpoolname NEXTSTGPOOL=nextstgpoolname

 From TSM Studio

Right Click on the Storage Pool and Choose Next Storage Pool and then choose the storage pool

The next part is setting the migration threshold parameters which tell TSM when to move the data from the current pool to the “Next Storage Pool”. These two parameters are

Low Migration and High Migration, they represent a percentage full threshold for the storage pool that they are defined on

These Parameters function like this

TSM writes data to the current pool, the current pool hits the High Migration Threshold and will start “migrating” data to the storage pool defined in the “Next Storage Pool” field.

TSM will keep “migrating” data until it reaches the Low Migration Threshold and will then stop and wait for the High Threshold to be hit again

To Change the Low Migration or High Migration from the Admin CLI

UPDATE STGPOOL stgpoolname LOWMIG=xx HIGHMIG=xx

From TSM Studio, Select the Storage Pool and right click and choose Migration Thresholds and then choose the values

Ideally you will want enough disk space in your Primary Disk pool to store the nightly backups and while the nightly backups are running you will keep the high migration value somewhere around the 80 mark and low migration value somewhere around the 60 mark just so you don’t run out of space in the Primary Disk Pool.  During this time you can be running other TSM admin tasks such as reclamation.

 In the morning when your backups have finished or close to finishing you can change the High Migration to 5 and Low Migration to 0, this will then force all the data from the Primary Disk Pool ( Usually to Tape ).

This is not the only way this can be done and you may have reasons to run things differently and if you have a VTL you may wish to run with low values continuously.

Another Parameter related to Migration is the Migration Processes parameter, this defines how many processes will be used to Migrate the Data to the Next Storage Pool. When moving from the Primary Disk data to a Primary Sequential Pool (In most cases this is usually a tape pool) each process will use one tape drive.

UPDATE STGPOOL stgpool MIGPROCESS=xx 

From TSM Studio, Select the Storage Pool, Right Click and choose Migration Processes.

These procedures can be automated using Administrative Schedules  

To stop Migration set  HighMig=100 and LowMig=99 and to Migrate everything HighMig=0 and LowMig=0

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All the articles that I have written are from my own personal experiences using TSM for the past 15+ years. TSM is a diverse product that can be setup and deployed in many ways. Before using any of the methods in the articles, ensure that you use due diligence to test that all steps will work as described in your environment.

If you have comments, like help with the contents in one of the articles or would like to see an article on a particular TSM topic please send me an email at gelliott@spiritsoftware.biz. You are welcome to use these articles on your own sites as long as you have a link on the article back to this site

Example:  Written by Spirit Software Solutions

Graeme Elliott CEO,
Founder and Chief Architect
Spirit Software Solutions

All Articles are copyrighted by Spirit Software Solutions

*** LEGAL STUFF ***

Direct, incidental, consequential, indirect, or punitive damages arising out of your access to, or use of, the site and articles within. Without limiting the foregoing, everything on the site is provided to you ‘AS IS’ WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON INFRINGEMENT. “Please note that some jurisdictions may not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so some of the above exclusions may not apply to you. Check your local laws for any restrictions or limitations regarding the exclusion of implied warranties.”

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Any TSM command can be run as an administrative schedule and the TSM Scheduler whilst not being an advanced scheduler does provide a lot of flexibility of when a task can start.

To have a look at the currently defined Admin Schedules QUERY SCHEDULE * TYPE=ADMINISTRATIVE FORMAT=DETAILED

From TSM Studio go to the Automation Category and open the Admin Schedule’s Dataview.

TSM has two styles of schedules that can be used

Classic Style and Enhanced Style

The Enhanced Style option gives more advanced scheduling options such as running on a particular day of the month, week of the month. We will cover the Enhanced Style in another article.

Let’s have a look at the Define Schedule Command

DEFEINE SCHEDULE schedulename TYPE=ADMINISTRATIVE CMD=’EXPIRE INVENTORY’ ACTIVE=YES DESCRIPTION=’Admin Schedule’ PRIORITY=5 STARTDATE=TODAY STARTTIME=NOW DURATION=20 DURUNITS=MINUTES SCHEDTYLE=CLASSIC PERIOD=1 PERUNITS=DAYS DAYOFWEEK=ANY EXPIRATION=NEVER

schedulename – Any name that has meaning to you

TYPE=ADMINISTRATIVE – Tells TSM this is an admin schedule, The other type of schedule is a client schedule which is used to define client tasks ( such as backups )

CMD=’EXPIRE INVENTORY’ – Enter the command to be run for this schedule, remember to enclose in quotes if there a spaces in the command

ACTIVE=YES – Whether this schedule is active or not. If set to no it will not run

DESCRIPTION=’Admin Schedule’ – Enter any meaningful description. Remember that any parameter that has spaces in it will need to be surrounded by quotes

PRIORITY=5 – If you have more than one schedule with the same start time. TSM will start the schedule with the highest priority first. ( 5 is the default )

STARTDATE=TODAY – This is the start date for the schedule. The schedule will not run until the start date has been reached. TODAY is a special keyword that is substituted with today’s date, you can also use TODAY+X (where x = the number of days ) or in the format MM/DD/YYYY   STARTTIME=NOW – This specifies the start window for the schedule which may not be the actual start time of the schedule. This is used in conjunction with the   DURATION and DURUNITS to determine when the schedule will start. NOW is a special keyword used to specify the current time DURATION and DURUNITS – These two parameters with the Start

Time specify the window that TSM will use to start the schedule.

DURATION being a numerical value from 1 to 999 and

DURUNITS can be MINUTES, HOURS, DAYS.

Our settings here tell TSM that is must start this schedule within 20 minutes of the Start Time.
There is a special case in that you can set the DURUNITS=INDEFINITE which tell TSM that is can start the schedule any time after the Start Time.

PERIOD and PERUNITS – These two parameters tell TSM how often to run the schedule so in this example it is once every day. There is a special value for PERUNITS, PERUNITS=ONETIME which instructs TSM to only run this schedule once.

DAYOFWEEK=ANY – This parameter tells TSM what day of the week to run this schedule on.  Other possible values are WEEKDAY, WEEKEND, Monday, Tuesday, etc.

EXPIRATION=NEVER – This parameter specifies when the schedule expires. After this date the schedule will no longer run. Use MM/DD/YYYY format.   To Define an Admin Schedule in TSM Studio open the Admin Schedule Dataview and select Add Schedule

Also available from this Dataview,  Execute, Disable, Enable, Edit and Delete your schedules    To See a Time of Day diagram for your schedule open the automation Category and open the Admin Schedules Time of Day Diagram. To change the times simply drag the Admin Schedule to a new time. ( This dataview is only available at the Server Level )

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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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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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Alternate Row BackColor Example

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This will display Line Numbers as shown below

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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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Expiring old backup and archive data from TSM is controlled by the EXPINTERVAL in your dsmserv.opt file.

EXPINTERVAL=24  specifies to run the expire process every 24 hours.

EXPINTERVAL=0 disables automatic expiration.

Removing old data from TSM can be run manually using the expire inventory command. Data is expired using the “Management Class” definitions that you have set on your files or if none are defined then the defaults for the policy set are used.  ( I will discuss policy sets in an upcoming article )

In version 5 expiration can only be run system wide, in version 6 you can run the expire inventory command on individual nodes, this is useful when changing management classes on individual nodes.

I recommend that you set the EXPINTERVAL to 0 so that you can control at what time this process runs and the setup an admin schedule to run the expire inventory command

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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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NOTE: Wont show anything for a library that has no scratch tapes available, for that use TSM Studio

SELECT LIBRARY_NAME,COUNT(*) AS NUM_SCRATCH FROM LIBVOLUMES WHERE UPPER(STATUS)=’SCRATCH’ GROUP BY LIBRARY_NAME

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TSM v5

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM NODES WHERE PLATFORM_NAME LIKE ‘%LINUX%’

TSMv6 and above

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM NODESVIEW WHERE PLATFORM_NAME LIKE ‘%LINUX%’

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