TSM for VE 6.4 Plugin - FMM16016E An error occurred while connecting to the Derby DB

Came across an interesting issue recently in that I could no longer access the TSM for VE 6.4 plugin with the following error messages appearing:

Whilst this isn't disastrous as the TSM for VE schedules continue to run, it makes monitoring and reporting of environments a pain. TSM administrators have to revert back to utilising the dsmsched and dsmerror logs for the datamover nodes rather than the shiny plugin.

Ok so whats gone wrong? Last night my plugin was working fine and this morning it isn't. In rare cases, the vmcli database might get corrupted because the service.properties file is deleted or becomes corrupt. This can happen when the vmcli daemon process is killed while it is writing to this file. In this case, messages similar to the following example will appear in the vmcli log file:

TSM Automatic Client Updates

New Blogpost up on the Tectrade blog on TSM Automatic Client Updates detailing the benefits and configuration steps involved 
Tectrade - Your Information Partner - TSM Automatic Client Updates

The Best Way to Backup a Virtual Machine

New Blogpost on the brand new Tectrade blog written by myself on the best way to backup a virtual machines - Tectrade - Your Information Partner - The Best Way to Backup a Virtual Machine

Keep your eyes on this blog for some more interesting posts on Data Protection, Data Storage, Server Consolidation & Data Placement over the coming months.

Upgrading from TSM 5.5 to TSM 6.3

With the End of Support date for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.5 likely to be confirmed in the near future it’s time for all businesses that still have TSM 5.5 instances running to look at upgrading to TSM 6.3.

So apart from the fact 5.5 is approaching EOL what other benefits do you get from upgrading to TSM 6.3? Well for a start the underlying database has changed from btree to DB2 significantly improving the scalability, performance and reliability of TSM, providing you with the ability to protect more data with less TSM servers. Additional enterprise features such as server side deduplication, client side deduplication, node replication and automatic client updates are also introduced within TSM 6.3. The table below provides a very high level version comparison. 

	TSM v5.5 (Q2 07)	TSM V6.3 (Q4 11)
TSM Server Capacity (Objects)	0.5 Billion	4 Billion
Disaster Recovery (TSM EE)	DR Planning	Client Data Replication
Reporting and Monitoring	Yes - Limited via Operational Reporting	Yes - Tivoli Monitoring (Customised Cognos reports can be created via Tivoli Common Reporting )
VMware Support	In-guest	TSM for VE v6.3
Target-Side Data Deduplication	NA	Yes
Source-Side Data Deduplication	NA	Yes
Automatic Client Software Updates	NA	All O/S
Unified Recovery Management	NA	TSM Suite for Unified Recovery

IBM XIV 11.1.1 Announced

Yesterday IBM announced details of the planned release of IBM XIV Storage System software V11.1.1 on August the 9th. The key enhancements within the software include:

• 1 TB raw capacity per drive support
• XIV USGv6 certification
• SCVMM 2012 integration
• XIV versions 11.1.x and 10.2.x certified for VMWare Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 4.1 and 5.x compliance

SVC and Storwize V7000 Real time Compression

Last month IBM released the 6.4 code for SVC and V7000. The main feature this code release introduced was Real time Compression (RtC). Being over at Storage Bootcamp in IBM Montpellier last week I got the chance to perform some testing on RtC, global mirror with change tracking on SVC & V7000 and creating automated migration policies for file systems on V7000U (Blog posts on global mirror with change tracking and automated migration policies for file systems will be posted up soon)

The impressive IBM Montpellier complex

IBM Storage Virtualization Boot Camp

IBM PSSC Montpellier, France - July 5th & 6th 2012
Agenda:
Introduction on IBM Block storage Virtualization solutions : SVC & Storwize V7000
Introduction on new IBM Storwize V7000 Unified (Block & File)
Virtualization last Advanced features:
                 Low Bandwith Remote Mirroring
                 Real Time Compression integration, …
SVC & VMware integration 
Storage management with TPC
Zoning implementation & configuration for SVC

Really looking forward to the IBM Storage Virtualization Boot Camp coming up this week. If anyone else is making the journey over for the boot camp and fancies a beer on the Wednesday night before feel free to give me a shout before hand

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments 6.3

In a nutshell TSM for VE provides protection for virtual machines by offloading backup workloads to a proxy server (vStorage Backup Server) and provides multiple restore capabilities including full VM restore, file level restore and instant restore. TSM for VE 6.3 contains several components which when combined ensure the protection of your virtalised environment these components are shown within the diagram below.

Tivoli Productivity Center V5.1 - Released 4th June 2012

SVC to V7000 Migration

Hello all, for those of you wondering, yes I am still alive! I apologise for going AWOL for 6 months! However I am now back and hope to be regularly updating my blog with all my experiences and findings e.t.c. 

So whats the story? Back in 2010 IBM released the Storwize V7000 and subsequently the Storwize V7000 Unified. The IBM Storwize V7000 is IBMs next generation mid-range storage Virtualization platform. The platform has been built utilising many features from IBMs best of breed solutions including SVC, DS8000 and XIV. The features list is huge and my favourites include Easy Tier, the Dynamic Migration capabilities, the External Storage Subsystem Virtualization capabilities (these are not vendor limited - V6.3 Supported Hardware List, Device Driver, Firmware and Recommended Software Levels for IBM Storwize V7000) VAAI integration, vCenter integration and Clustered Systems. In a sentence it's a solid mid-range storage subsystem containing many features you would only expect to see on an enterprise level storage subsystem.

Data migration from an SVC presenting a DS3k, DS4k & DS5k to a V7000. It looks simple doesn't it? However I recently came across a scenario with an environment running old 4F2 SVC nodes and planned to migrate all data under the SVC on DS3k, DS4k and DS5k storage onto a V7000. This presented a problem in that the V7000 can only be presented as a host to an SVC running 5.1.0.8 and above - V5.1.x - Supported Hardware List, Device Driver and Firmware Levels for IBM SVC A quick check over the Node and UPS Interoperability Matrix for SVC shows that the 4F2s are only compatible with SVC code level 4.3.x.