Tivoli Storage Manager for AIX Administrator's Guide

Example of a Manual Library: Setting Up Two 8mm Tape Drives

In the following example, two 8mm drives are attached to the server system. The example takes you through the steps necessary to get TSM to use the devices for storing client data.

Because an operator must mount tapes for these drives, you must define them as part of a manual library to TSM. You can use this example as a guide when configuring other manual tape and optical devices. This example presents the procedure with a minimum of customization. If you want to do more, see the references in the steps for more details.

Attach the Device to the Server System

  1. Install the SCSI adapter card in your system, if not already installed.
  2. Determine the SCSI IDs available on the SCSI adapter card to which you are attaching the device. Find one unused SCSI ID for each drive.
  3. Follow the manufacturer's instructions to set the SCSI ID for the device to the unused SCSI ID that you found. Usually this means setting switches on the back of the device.
    Note:Each device connected in a chain to a single SCSI bus must be set to a unique SCSI ID. If each device does not have a unique SCSI ID, you may have serious system problems.
  4. Follow the manufacturer's instructions to attach the device to your server system hardware.


    1. Power off your system before attaching a device to prevent damage to the hardware.

    2. You must attach a terminator to the last device in the chain of devices connected on one SCSI adapter card. Detailed instructions should be in the documentation that came with your hardware.
  5. Install the appropriate device driver. See Installing Device Drivers.
  6. Determine the name for the device which is needed to define the device to TSM.

    For a tape drive, the device name is a special file name with the form /dev/mtx, where x is the number assigned when the drive was set up with its device driver.

Define the Device to Tivoli Storage Manager

  1. Define a manual library for TSM by entering the following command on the command line of a TSM administrative client. The name of the library is MANUAL8MM. The library type is manual because an operator must mount the tapes.
    define library manual8mm libtype=manual
  2. Define the drives that belong to this manual library.
    define drive manual8mm drive01 device=/dev/mt1
    define drive manual8mm drive02 device=/dev/mt2

    Both drives belong to the MANUAL8MM library. In this example, the drive known to the device driver by the special file name /dev/mt1 is given the TSM name DRIVE01. The device /dev/mt2 is given the TSM name DRIVE02. You might prefer to have the device driver name and the TSM name match.

    See Defining Drives and http://www.tivoli.com/support/storage_mgr/tivolimain.html .

  3. Classify drives according to type and format by defining TSM device classes. For example, if you want to use the 8500 recording format for the two drives in the MANUAL8MM library, use the following command to define a device class named TAPE8MM_CLASS:
    define devclass tape8mm_class devtype=8mm
    format=8500 library=manual8mm 

    See Defining and Updating Device Classes for Tape Devices.

  4. To check what you have defined, enter the following commands:
    query library
    query drive
    query devclass

    See Requesting Information about Libraries, Requesting Information about Drives, and Requesting Information about a Device Class.

  5. Create the storage pool to use the devices in the device class you just defined. For example, define a storage pool named TAPE8MM_POOL associated with the device class TAPE8MM_CLASS:
    define stgpool tape8mm_pool tape8mm_class maxscratch=20

    Key choices:

    1. Scratch volumes are labeled, empty volumes that are available for use. If you allow scratch volumes for the storage pool by specifying a value for the maximum number of scratch volumes, TSM can use any scratch volumes available without further action on your part. If you do not allow scratch volumes (MAXSCRATCH=0), you must perform the extra step of explicitly defining each volume to be used in the storage pool.

    2. Collocation is turned off by default. Collocation is a process by which the server attempts to keep all files belonging to a client node or client file space on a minimal number of volumes. Once clients begin storing data in a storage pool with collocation off, you cannot easily change the data in the storage pool so that it is collocated. To understand the advantages and disadvantages of collocation, see Keeping a Client's Files Together: Collocation and How Collocation Affects Reclamation.

    See Defining or Updating Primary Storage Pools.

Update the Tivoli Storage Manager Policy

You can do one of the following to update TSM policy:

The following steps assume that you are modifying the standard, IBM-supplied policy objects, named STANDARD, to allow clients to back up data directly to tape. However, if you want some clients to back up directly to tape and some to disk, keep the standard policy as is. For the clients that need to back up directly to tape, define new policy (policy domain, management class, copy groups) and assign these clients to the new policy domain. For details on the standard policy, see Using the Standard Policy. For how to define new policy, see Creating Your Own Policies.

Clients Back Up Directly to Tape

You can choose to have clients back up directly to the new tape storage pool that you defined.

Key choice:If you back up directly to tape, the number of clients that can back up data at the same time is equal to the number of drives available to the storage pool (through the mount limit of the device class). If you have only one drive, only one client at a time can back up data.

Performance of tape drives is often lower when backing up directly to tape than when backing up to disk and then migrating to tape. Backing up data directly to tape usually means more starting and stopping of the tape drive. Backing up to disk and then migrating to tape usually means the tape drive moves more continuously and improves performance.

  1. Update the backup copy group so that the destination for backups is the new tape storage pool, TAPE8MM_POOL. For example:
    update copygroup standard standard standard
    type=backup destination=tape8mm_pool
    Note:You may want clients in the STANDARD policy domain to be able to choose whether to back up directly to disk or to tape. If so, instead of updating the copy group in the STANDARD management class, you can define a new management class and a new copy group in the STANDARD domain. See Defining and Updating a Backup Copy Group.
  2. Activate this modified policy:
    activate policyset standard standard

    See Activating a Policy Set.

Clients Back Up to Disk and Then Data Migrates

You can have clients back up data to disk storage. Then let TSM migrate the data to the new tape storage pool when the amount of disk storage used reaches the migration threshold. For example, you can have data migrate from the default disk storage pool, BACKUPPOOL, to the new storage pool, TAPE8MM_POOL, by using the following command:

update stgpool backuppool nextstgpool=tape8mm_pool

If you have not changed the defaults for BACKUPPOOL, TSM will migrate data from this disk pool to the TAPE8MM_POOL when the disk pool is 90% full. See Migration for Disk Storage Pools.

Register Clients to the Policy Domain

If you updated the default STANDARD policy to use the new storage pool as a destination for backups from clients, the clients must be registered to that policy domain. To register a client named ASTRO to the STANDARD policy domain and assign the client the password CADET, enter this command:

register node astro cadet

You do not need to specify a policy domain because the STANDARD policy domain is the default.

You can change the domain to which a client is assigned by using the UPDATE NODE command.

For information on options when registering clients, see Registering Nodes with the Server.

Label Volumes

Ensure that volumes are available to TSM in the library.

  1. You must label volumes that do not already have a standard label. Use the LABEL LIBVOLUME command from the server console or an administrative client. For example, to use one of the 8mm drives, enter this command to label a volume with the id of vol001:
    label libvolume manual8mm vol001

    Keep enough labeled volumes on hand so that you do not run out during an operation such as client backup.

  2. Depending on whether you use scratch volumes or private volumes, do one of the following:
