Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

TSM filespaces clean-up

Within TSM (or nowadays known as IBM Spectrum Protect), filespaces may exist that are no longer backed up. These are file systems that were once backed up, but are no longer backed anymore.

This may occur if someone deletes a file system from a client, and thus it is no longer backed up. Or a file system was added to the exclude list, so it's no longer included in any backup runs.

These old filespaces may use up quite some storage, and because they're never being backed up anymore, their data remains on the TSM server for restore purposes.

It's good practice to review these filespaces and to determine if they can be deleted from TSM to free up storage space. And thus it's a good idea to put this in a script, and have that script run from time to time automatically, for example by scheduling it in the crontab on a weekly or monthly basis.

Here's a sample script. You can run it on your AIX TSM server. It assumes you have a "readonly" user account configured within TSM, with a password of "readonly". It will send out an email if any obsolete filespace are present. You have to update the email variable at the beginning of the script to whatever email address you want to send an email.

#!/bin/ksh

email="my@emailaddress.com"
y=$(perl -MPOSIX -le 'print strftime "%D",localtime(time-(60*60*24))')
mytempfile=/tmp/myadmintempfile.$$
rm -f ${mytempfile}
dsmadmc -comma -id=readonly -password=readonly q filespace \* \* f=d | \
grep -v $(date +"%m/%d/%y") | grep -v "${y}" | grep ",," > ${mytempfile}
if [ -s ${mytempfile} ] ; then
cat ${mytempfile} | mailx -s "Filespaces not backed up during last 24 \
hours." ${email} >/dev/null 2>&1
fi
rm -f ${mytempfile}

exit 0
The script will send an email with a list of any filespaces not backed in the last 24 hours, if any are found.

The next thing you'll have to do is to investigate why the file system is not backed up. If you've determined that the filespace is no longer required in TSM, then you can move forward by deleting the filespace from TSM.

For example, for a UNIX file system:
delete filespace hostname /file/system
For file systems of Windows clients, deleting a filespace may be a bit more challenging. TSM might not allow you to remove a filespace and exit with an error message like "No matching file space found".

You might attempt to delete the filespace like this:
delete filespace nodename \\nodename\d$ nametype=uni
Or, you can remove Windows filespaces in TSM by filespace number. In that case, first list the known filespaces in TSM of a specific nodename, for example:
q filespace nodename *
This will list all the filespaces known in TSM for host "nodename". Replace nodename with whatever client you're searching for. In the output you'll see the hostanme, the filespace name, and a filespace number, for example, 1.

To delete filespace with filespace number "1" for host "nodename", you can run:
delete filespace nodename 1 nametype=fsid

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Spectrum Protect / TSM: Display deduplicaton bytes pending removal

There are numerous show commands available for IBM Spectrum Protect / TSM, that will display information about the environment. Many of them aren't as well documented, probably because IBM intends to use these commands for their own support.

Quite a lot of these commands have been documented by Spectrum Protec / TSM users, and an example can be found on the following web site: http://www.mm-it.at/de/TSM_Show_Commands.html.

A very interesting show command, that can be used to display the amount of deduplicate bytes pending removal, is the following command:

tsm: TSM>show deduppending file_disk
ANR1015I Storage pool FILE_DISK has 7,733,543,532,121 duplicate bytes pending removal.
The command above shows the number of byes for storage pool "FILE_DISK" still to be removed by the dedupe processes.

The command may take quite some time to run, up to 10 minutes, so please be patient when issuing this command.

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Check Spectrum Protect / TSM backups

An easy command to check on the Spectrum Protect / TSM server what the backup status of all the Spectrum Protect / TSM clients is using the "q event" command. For example:

q event * * begind=-1 begint=09:00 endd=today endt=09:00
The command above will display the status of all the backups jobs in the last 24 hours between 9 AM yesterday and 9 AM today.

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

IBM Spectrum Protect/TSM Links

Official IBM Spectrum Protect / Tivoli Storage Manager sites:

Other TSM related sites: IBM Spectrum Protect

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Register a new TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect administrator

To register a new TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect administrator, run:

register admin adminname password contact="Contact details of the new admin" emailaddress=email-address@ofthenewadmin.com
Next, grant system privilege authority to the new admin:
grant authority adminname class=sys
To remove a TSM admin, run:
remove admin adminname

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Show configuration of a TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect server

To save the complete configuration of a TSM server to a file, run:

dsmadmc -id=admin -password=admin show config > /tmp/config
This assumes that you have an admin account with the password admin. And it will write the output file to /tmp/config.

If you wish to have comma separated output, add -comma.

To just display the status of the TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect server, run (this is included in the output of show config):
q status
Another very interesting command to run is:
q system

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Tail TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect console log

The following command can be used to tail the TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect console log:

dsmadmc -console
This will allow you to continously follow what is happening on the TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect server.

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Start a backup from the TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect server

There is a way to start a backup from the TSM / IBM Spectrum Protect server itself, and that is by defining a client action. For example, to start an incremental backup on a node, run:

define clientaction action=incremental
You can use wild cards like * in the node name, for example:
def clienta node* act=i
You can monitor the schedule event, using the following command:
q ev * @1
You may cancel this schedule, by running:
delete schedule [policy domain] @1

Topics: Backup & restore, Spectrum Protect

Excluding a directory from the TSM backup

If you need to exclude a specific file system from the TSM backup, than you would add the following line to the dsm.sys file:

DOMAIN ALL-LOCAL -/opt/archive
This examples will avoid backing up file system /opt/archive.

Now, what if you wish to exclude a certain directory within a file system from the backup:

Create the following enty in the dsm.sys file:
INCLExcl /usr/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/inclexcl
Then create the inclexcl file and add the following line:
Exclude.dir /opt/archive/tmp
This will only exclude the tmp folder in file system /opt/archive.

You can check with the following command:
# dsmc q inclexcl
Tivoli Storage Manager

Topics: Backup & restore, Oracle, Spectrum Protect

Test Oracle TDP

How do you test if Oracle TDP (RMAN) is working properly?

# tdpoconf showenv

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