Integrating DocAve with Tivoli Storage Manager Part 1

This week I had a chance to attend an IBM event where I had the opportunity to present the integration between the AvePoint DocAve Platform and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. In particular this integration consists in making TSM storage available to DocAve in order to write and read the SharePoint data backups. I prepared a quick demo showing the interaction including the common scenarios and best practices from a DocAve Platform point of view. I thought I’d share the steps I went through to prepare this demo environment. For this purpose I decided to split this post in three parts for easy reading 🙂

 First part is inherent to a quick installation and configuration of IBM TSM on a Windows box which includes:

• Prerequisites for installing Tivoli Storage Manager

• Installing TSM Admin Console

• Register TSM Server License

• Setup TSM storage pools

• Quick TSM commands

Second part is relative to AvePoint DocAve Platform configuration including:

• How to setup TSM storage in DocAve

• A quick Backup/Restore test of SharePoint content

Third part is about considerations for a Backup Strategy when using:

• TSM as a single Tier storage

• TSM as a multiple Tier Storage

Prerequisites for installing Tivoli Storage Manager

Installing TSM is a relatively quick operation and does not require big prerequisites. For my quick lab I have used the following:

• 1x Windows 2008 R2 machine
• 1x TSM 6.3.5.0 Server
• 1x TSM 6.3.2.0 Admin Console

Note1: the TSM server does not necessarily have to be part of the same AD Domain where SharePoint and SQL are members.

Note2: make sure the default ports used by TSM Server are reachable from other machines where TSM clients and consoles are installed

Note3: be aware that this configuration and the configuration steps below are for testing only. For Production environments follow the IBM installation best practices for TSM

In my lab the TSM Server has the following specs:

• Win2008 R2 Standard

• 8GB RAM

• System Drive 40GB (OS and TSM installation binaries)

• Data Drive 40GB (TSM Server Instance and DISK Volumes)

• Machine is not part of the Domain

• A user with Admin Rights on the local box to perform the installation

• A user part of DB2 groups (will be created during installation)

• A user with TSM Admin rights (will be created during installation)

Installing Tivoli Storage Manager

First thing would be to install the JRE. It can be downloaded from here

At this point we are ready to start with the main installation. In my case I have a 6.3.5.0 package. When double-clicking on the executable the file structure below is created. It is a good idea to run the prerequisite check in case we are missing something. The output will also be located into a txt file.

The process will look something similar to this one..

For our testing 8GB of RAM are sufficient. If you are planning to use features like deduplication make sure you have enough resources allocated

Great stuff ! All checks were successful. We can now start the installation process as per screenshots below

Before proceeding with TSM Server configuration we need to create a user with local admin rights and be a member of the 2 default groups created by the installation “DB2Admns” e “DB2Users”. The screenshot below shows the creation of a user called “Doma” and the membership to the required groups:

So now we are ready to start the configuration of Tivoli Storage Manager. Alternatively it is also possible to run this by running “\%ProgramFiles%\Tivoli\TSM\server\dsmicfgx.exe

For my lab I’m accepting the default instance name. Check on the IBM Knowledge Base site on the rules about the names can be used for TSM Server instances. As a user Id we utilise the one created in the previous step

In this case I’m installing the Server Instance on a custom directory on a separate drive

If you are short on drive space remember to reduce to the minimum size the logs (2GB – default 16GB)

The server name can be changed. By default it is the hostname. When changing the name here choose carefully which one you go for as changing this one back to another value it’s not an easy task

Finally we create a user that will be the administrator of the TSM Server instance. This user does not exist into the local users of the Windows server

By default all the TSM clients (and DocAve will use this port too) communicate with port 1500. Choose a different one if this one is already in use

The installation of the TSM Server is now completed.  Next step is to install the Admin Console so we can administer the TSM Server

Installing TSM Admin Console

Installing the Admin Console it’s a very simple process as described from the following screenshots. For this lab I will be using version 6.3.2.0.

Now login as “Doma” user and run the Admin Console install

Install the prerequisites

At this point we need to create the client option file:

 Step 1

Copy \%ProgramFiles%\Tivoli\TSM\config\dsm.smp’ to \%ProgramFiles%\Tivoli\TSM\baclient\’ and rename it to dsm.opt.

Step 2

Add the following two lines into the file:

nodename TSM635 (or your chosen one)

tcpserveraddress localhost

 Now by using the link provided we can work with the admin console. We need to provide the credentials for the chosen TSM user admin. In my case it was called TSMAdmin 🙂

Register TSM Server Licence

To register and query the license it can be done by issuing the following commands as per screenshot below. The license file is normally located under \%ProgramFiles%\Tivoli\TSM\server

Commands to check the TSM Server installation

After the initial installation it might be worth it to check other valuable information and make sure everything is going as expected

Setup TSM storage pools

Setting up the TSM Storage Pools it is a very easy process. For the purpose of this lab I will be creating a 10GB volume that will be used to store the SharePoint Backup Data. An additional 5GB storage volume will be created for Archiving purposes. In particular I will be creating DISK type volumes to be stored locally on the TSM Server. These DISK volumes will be hosted on the second drive in the respective folders called BCKPool and ARCPool for Backup and Archive data. The screenshot below shows the command line to create Backup/Archive volumes and query the actual storage configuration

Quick TSM commands

 For those who want to know more about administrative commands or maybe they want to run commands to troubleshoot the actual installation this page can provide a comprehensive list of all supported operations

References:

Install Tivoli Storage Manager

TSM Administrative commands