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Tivoli Storage Manager for Windows Backup-Archive Clients Installation and User's Guide

Pre-Backup Considerations

Beginning with Tivoli Storage Manager Version 4.2, the Windows NT and Windows 2000 clients are Unicode enabled. New clients storing data on the server for the first time require no special set up. The server automatically stores files and directories as Unicode enabled. However, if your client already stores data on the server and you upgrade to the Windows NT, 2000 Version 4.2 client, you need to plan for the migration of files spaces to Unicode. For migration information, see Migrating to the Unicode-Enabled Client.

This involves renaming your file spaces on the server and creating new Unicode-enabled file spaces on the server using the autofsrename option. For detailed information about this option, see Autofsrename.

For additional information about working with Unicode-enabled file spaces, see the following references:

Configure Memory-Constrained Workstations to Run Incremental Backups

Incremental backup performance suffers if the workstation has a low amount of memory available prior to starting the backup. If your workstation is memory constrained, specify the memoryefficientbackup Yes option in your client options file dsm.opt. Specifying Yes reduces memory consumption but increases backup time. When you specify Yes, Tivoli Storage Manager analyzes only one directory at a time for backup consideration. If performance remains poor, check your communication buffer settings and the communication link between your workstation and the server. If your workstation is not memory constrained, setting the memoryefficientbackup option to Yes will degrade your backup performance.

Performing a Backup with Limited Bandwidth

If you plan to perform a backup over a network device that has limited bandwidth, such as a modem, you can help reduce network traffic by using adaptive subfile backup. Adaptive subfile backup requires a version 4 server. Reducing traffic can also increase the speed of your backup. An adaptive subfile backup sends only changed portions of a file to the server during successive backup operations.

Perform the following steps to use adaptive subfile backup.

  1. Ensure that the server allows this type of backup. Check with your system administrator.
  2. Set the subfilebackup, subfilecachepath and subfilecachesize options in your client options file dsm.opt. For more information on adaptive subfile backup options, see:
  3. Add an exclude.dir option to your client options file, which excludes the directory containing the subfile cache information. See Exclude Options for more information.

When you are ready to back up changes, adaptive subfile backup will occur as part of incremental and selective backups.

Adaptive subfile backups can significantly reduce the amount of data exchanged between client and server. For example, suppose while at your work location you back up a two megabyte report with subfile backup enabled. Then, while traveling, you change the report and want to send only the changes back to the server at your work location. To accomplish this, you would simply connect to a modem and use adaptive subfile backup.

You can restore an adaptive subfile backup using the restore command. The server will restore the base file along with the updates from the changed (delta) subfile so that what you receive is the latest backed-up version of your file.

Using an Include-Exclude List to Control Processing

Usually, there are files on your disk that you do not want to back up. These files might be operating system or application files that you can easily recover by reinstalling the program, or any other file that you can easily rebuild.

Use the include and exclude options in the client options file dsm.opt to define which files to exclude from backup processing. Tivoli Storage Manager uses the include-exclude list during incremental and selective backups. Tivoli Storage Manager backs up any file that is not explicitly excluded. It is not necessary to use an include option to include specific files, unless those files are in a directory that you are trying to exclude.

The include-exclude list may contain items specified by the server. To view the contents of your include-exclude list, use the query inclexcl command.

For more information about setting up an include-exclude list, see "Creating an Include-Exclude List (Optional)".

You can encrypt the data that is sent to the server during a backup or archive operation using standard DES 56-bit encryption. Files are selected for encryption using include.encrypt and exclude.encrypt processing. By default, files are not encrypted unless they are explicitly included using the include.encrypt option. For more information about the include.encrypt option, see Include Options. For more information about the exclude.encrypt option, see Exclude Options.

To encrypt file data, you must select an encryption key password, which Tivoli Storage Manager uses to generate the encryption key for encrypting and decrypting the file data. You can specify whether to save the encryption key password in the Registry by using the encryptkey option. If you choose not to store the password in the registry, be sure to keep a record of it in case you need to restore.

While restoring an encrypted file, Tivoli Storage Manager will prompt you for the key password to decrypt the file in the following cases:

Note:
If the encrypt key is removed from the registry or if you forget it, your data will be unrecoverable.
For more information about this option, see Encryptkey.

See Backup: Additional Considerations for additional information to consider when performing a backup. You do not need to understand this information to perform basic backups.


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