IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

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IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) is a centralised policy-based data warehouse, generally billed as enterprise class data backup and recovery software. The software enables a user to insert objects via space management, backup, and archive tools, or to retrieve that data via similar recall, restore and retrieve methods.

This product is part of the IBM TotalStorage suite of products and is unrelated to Tivoli Framework.

ITSM maintains a relational database (limit 534GB through ITSM v5.5) and recovery log (aka transaction log, limit 13.5GB) for logging, configuration, statistical information, and object metadata. DB pages are always 4KB, and partitions every 4MB. Single row inserts only. On average, 20GB of space is consumed for every 25 million objects. Shallow directory structures utilise less TSM DB space than deeper paths. This database may generally be queried via an emulated SQL-98 compliant interface, or through undocumented SHOW, CREATE or DELETE commands.

Actual user data is managed via a cascading hierarchy of storage media presented as raw devices (UNIX), filesystem containers (Windows and Linux), streaming tape or optical media. Additionally, emulated tape from a Virtual Tape Library or EMC Centera WORM archival device are also supported. Additionally, duplicate copies of any subset of data may be created on sequential media for redundancy or offsite management.

The 5.5 release of the TSM Server is supported on AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Windows Server, and z/OS. The current 5.5 release of the TSM Client is supported on NetWare, Mac OS, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, z/OS, Solaris, and Windows 32/64-bit.

Typically, a TSM implementation receives small files from large numbers of clients to a random access disk pool. This prevents sequential access device contention. Once the data is received, or if the pool fills, then typically, the data will spool to a smaller number of high-speed tape devices. Many other configurations are possible, and overall, TSM is highly flexible.

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