Disaster Recovery with Tivoli Storage Manager

Primitivo Cervantes
September 2001

Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) from Tivoli is an enterprise-wide backup and recovery software package that is frequently used by small and large companies to back up their critical data. The TSM software runs on a server connected to the client's network, and the other systems' data are backed up to this server through the client's network. The data can also be restored to any system through the network. Because the TSM server is a critical resource, a process is needed to ensure the TSM server and any other system's data are restored in the event of a disaster. In this article, I will discuss how to use the Disaster Recovery Module (DRM) of TSM to recover the TSM server and its database to restore other systems' data. I will also discuss how off-site tapes are created and managed in preparation for such a scenario.

A typical TSM server scenario will include the server hardware, a tape library, two or more tape drives within the tape library, the TSM software, a network connection, and other systems that need to be backed up (TSM clients). The TSM server hardware and the TSM clients can vary greatly (e.g., HP, Sun, IBM, etc.). The storage devices can also vary (e.g., IBM tape libraries, STK silos, DLT tape libraries, etc.).

For purposes of this article, I will describe the TSM and DRM functions using the example of an IBM RISC System/6000 model H80 as the server system and an IBM 3494 tape library with two IBM 3590 tape drives as the storage devices. The IBM 3590 tape drives are connected to the IBM H80 using a SCSI connection. The client network is a 100-Mb Ethernet network. This TSM server will have a hostname of "tsmserver1".