Monthly backups with Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)

This is a general overview of how monthly backups (or long time retention) can be accommodated in TSM. I tried all of them on different configurations I did over the years. The only one I find to work easily (backups are happening, and you can do restores) is Additional Node. Even that the administration overhead is present, at least you can restore from it easily, where the other options, restore can be complicated, or full restore not even possible. Backupsets are the cleanest solution. But they were dropped in TSM 6.1.

- Generate Backupsets monthly

- advantages:

No additional backup required from nodes

It can be generated any time of the day/month as it supports generation on data in the past.

In conjunction with Active Storage Pool you don’t read data from tapes when you generate them, you read from disk.

Tapes can be kicked out of library.

You can prolong the expiration of a certain backup if required (legal or other matters).

- disadvantages:

Dropped in 6.1 (no future),IBM will extend support in 6.1 starting with 6.1.2. 

Data is only on one set of tapes.

You need something else for TDPs. 

You need to monitor which tape expire when.

- Archive for each node when needed

- advantages :

You can kick data out of library,

Easy to setup,
- disadvantages:

Full data transfer from node required each time you run it.

Different include, exclude statements to be maintained.  

You can’t restore system state unless you use Windows backup,

Increase to db size.  

- Additional node in different domain with long retention

- advantages:

It's an incremental every month

You can do longer retention periods, 

You can offload the library with the tapes.
- disadvantages:

administration overhead, additional domains, additional nodes,

Additional failing schedulers,

Doubles the active data on TSM,

Increase data transfer in TSM,

Increase TSM database,

if tapes are offloaded from library, reclamation will begin to fail and will need to be run manually.

The above ones are the “easy ones”. The following are more complex configurations:

- Export node 

- advantages:

tapes can be taken out of the library.

No Retention period, backup can be kept “forever”.
- disadvantages:

If restore required you need to import the node
Export time takes quite a long time, as you export the whole node each month,

You use quite a lot of tapes.

Configuration is complex, and if you take the tapes out, you need a way of managing the tapes on offshelf.

- Additional server for long time retention.

- advantages:

Does not impact the daily database in case of DR,

Don’t need collocation because when you need to restore a monthly backup, performance is not need it,

It's an incremental every month

You can do longer retention periods, 

You can offload the library with the tapes

          - disadvantages:

administration overhead, Additional TSM server, additional domains, additional nodes,

Additional failing schedulers,