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Administrator's Guide


Chapter 1. Introducing Tivoli Storage Manager

Tivoli Storage Manager is an enterprise-wide storage management application. It provides automated storage management services to workstations, personal computers, and file servers from a variety of vendors, with a variety of operating systems. Tivoli Storage Manager includes the following components:

Server

Server program
The server program provides backup, archive, and space management services to the clients.

You can set up multiple servers in your enterprise network to balance storage, processor, and network resources.

Administrative interface
The administrative interface allows administrators to control and monitor server activities, define management policies for clients, and set up schedules to provide services to clients at regular intervals. Administrative interfaces available include a command-line administrative client and a Web browser interface. Tivoli Storage Manager allows you to manage and control multiple servers from a single interface that runs in a Web browser.

Server database and recovery log
The Tivoli Storage Manager server uses a database to track information about server storage, clients, client data, policy, and schedules. The server uses the recovery log as a scratch pad for the database, recording information about client and server actions while the actions are being performed.

Server storage
The server can write data to hard disk drives, disk arrays and subsystems, stand-alone tape drives, tape libraries, and other forms of random- and sequential-access storage. The media that the server uses are grouped into storage pools. The storage devices can be connected directly to the server, or connected via local area network (LAN) or storage area network (SAN).

Client Nodes
A client node can be a workstation, a personal computer, a file server, a network-attached storage (NAS) file server, or even another Tivoli Storage Manager server. The client node has Tivoli Storage Manager client software installed (except for NAS file servers using NDMP). A client node is registered with the server.

Backup-archive client
The backup-archive client allows users to maintain backup versions of files, which they can restore if the original files are lost or damaged. Users can also archive files for long-term storage and retrieve the archived files when necessary. Users themselves or administrators can register workstations and file servers as client nodes with a Tivoli Storage Manager server.

The storage agent is an optional component that may also be installed on a system that is a client node. The storage agent enables LAN-free data movement for client operations.

Application program interface (API)
The API allows you to enhance existing applications to use the backup, archive, restore, and retrieve services that Tivoli Storage Manager provides. Tivoli Storage Manager API clients can register as client nodes with a Tivoli Storage Manager server.

 

Tivoli Storage Manager supports separately licensed, optional products. These include:

Tivoli Data Protection for applications (application clients)
Application clients allow users to perform online backups of data for applications such as database programs. After the application program initiates a backup or restore, the application client acts as the interface to Tivoli Storage Manager. The Tivoli Storage Manager server then applies its storage management functions to the data. The application client can perform its functions while application users are working, with minimal disruption.

Tivoli Data Protection for NDMP
The Tivoli Data Protection for NDMP product allows you to use Tivoli Storage Manager with the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) to back up and restore file systems stored on a network-attached storage (NAS) file server. The data on the NAS file server is backed up to a tape library. See Chapter 6, Setting Up Tivoli Data Protection for NDMP for more information.

Tivoli Space Manager
Tivoli Space Manager provides space management services for workstations on some platforms. Tivoli Space Manager automatically migrates files that are less frequently used to server storage, freeing space on the workstation. The migrated files are also called space-managed files. Users can recall space-managed files automatically simply by accessing them as they normally would from the workstation. Tivoli Space Manager is also known as the hierarchical storage management (HSM) client.

For information about supported operating systems for clients, see the Tivoli Storage Manager Web site:

http://www.tivoli.com/support/storage_mgr/tivolimain.html

Client programs such as the backup-archive client and the HSM client (space manager) are installed on systems that are connected through a LAN and are registered as client nodes. From these client nodes, users can back up, archive, or migrate files to the server.

The following sections present key concepts and information about Tivoli Storage Manager. The sections describe how Tivoli Storage Manager manages client files based on information provided in administrator-defined policies, and manages devices and media based on information provided in administrator-defined Tivoli Storage Manager storage objects.

The final section gives an overview of tasks for the administrator of the server, including options for configuring the server and how to maintain the server.

Concepts:
"How Tivoli Storage Manager Stores Client Data"
How the Server Manages Storage
Configuring and Maintaining the Server


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