Central Backup at DESY

The Backup System

Since 1994 , IBM's Storage Protect ( ISP, ITSM, IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager, TSM, ADSM, DFDSM, WDSF) is used at DESY as central backup system on multi-user-systems/platforms. It is a pure client/server application and uses TCP/IP as communication protocol.

Every Tuesday is the regular maintenance slot for all backup server.

The backup system consists of central backup servers and various clients. The DESY IT group manages and organizes the TSM backup rules. The Managers are members of the information Fabrics Group (INFA) of IT and are responsible for the backup server. In addition, we support the local administrator in the local configuration of TSM (TSM domains).

Each backup client system has a local manager who is responsible for local processing. The local administrator has to specify which files should be saved and which also perform the verification. The local administrator has to check the local log file error messages ,and also the correct functioning of the backup software. There are some useful commands to the local TSM / ADSM administrator to help.

All systems need to remain switched on up to 24 hours, and are then automatically backed up during the night. When a file system is first secured a full backup will be performed. Afterwards, only incremental backups are performed, and only new and changed files are backed up.

At the scheduled start time of the backup, the backup server sendst a start pulse to the client that is detected by a local daemon accordingly, then the backup is started. Some data is already locally compressed in memory (CPU is loaded) and then sent to the backup server, which ultimately saves the data to tape.

Online help for the use of TSM / ADSM client is using the CLI commands: dsmc help or
dsmc_afs or help with the graphical UI program or dsm dsm_afs possible, please klick right on
top the "Help" or "Getting Started" option.

Email suggestions and questions to tsm.service .