Backup Central

We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?

I would break them up in a way that makes sense with the physical disk
layout.

Andy Huebner
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of
Dollens, Bruce
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:16 AM
To: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] New TSM Layout

We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?


This e-mail (including any attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not an intended recipient or an authorized representative of an intended recipient, you are prohibited from using, copying or distributing the information in this e-mail or its attachments. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and delete all copies of this message and any attachments.
Thank you.

I would highly recommend dividing that into two pools. This gives you
more flexibility in number of reclamation, migration, and backup
processes that can be run. The backup and migration can be run
concurrently in newer versions of TSM, however you can only run 1
reclamation process at a time. If you split up your data into two sets
of primary and copy pools you can run 2 reclamation processes instead of
just 1. Also migration and backup processes go much faster on smaller
pools. (or at least SEEM to ).

However, that would depend on how many tape drives you have to take
advantage of.

As for partitions, I'm assuming you mean disk volumes. I would go with
smaller volumes and more of them. 20 - 60 GB is a good range for a
storage pool volume. You CAN go bigger (100 GB +), I have, but it's
harder on the OS, and so slows things down a bit.

I have no hard numbers to prove my point, just general observations
across the years. I also have only run TSM on AIX, and Linux, so YMMV
on Windows.

See Ya'
Howard


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf
Of Dollens, Bruce
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:16 AM
To: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] New TSM Layout

We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to
900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4
partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?

That depends more on the number of disks you writing to and the type of
san you are using.

For instance if you are using an SVC or other virtualization solution
your 900 gb may already be striped across more than 30 disks. Then
partitioning may not be necessary.
If you are using a direct connect solution you may see better
performance if you create multiple luns across a number of arrays. In
this instance you are better off partitioning them as the sizes of the
physicals disks presented to the system.

We are using 3 1 tb luns being served by an SVC for diskpools to one TSM
server. But each diskpool varies in size from 100gb to 1.5 tb. All the
diskpools have 25-50gb volumes defined and each diskpool has volumes on
each lun.



-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of
Dollens, Bruce
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:16 AM
To: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: New TSM Layout

We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?

Hi

I would stick to 100GB diskpool volumes as many as you require.
Its not necessary to split into different LUNS as the SAN takes care of
itself and it is RAID 5 hopefully.

I have learnt to keep to smaller logical units for every thing in TSM.
Makes for better management and migration etc.

Regards



Adrian Compton
Aspen Pharmacare Port Elizabeth
tel: +2741 4072855
Fax: +2741 453 7452
Cell: +27823204495
Email: acompton < at > aspenpharma.com

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of
Dollens, Bruce
Sent: 31 July 2008 16:16 PM
To: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] New TSM Layout

We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?

I went through a number of different configurations on our Clariion. The
best ended up being to take only 1 LUN from each raid group. As many raid
groups as possible.
My main TSM server has 19 X 200gB raw volumes for its diskpool. Each
volume is from a different raidgroup.

Just try not to use more than one lun from the same raid group. That's
when I ran into performance issues.

Regards,
Shawn
________________________________________________
Shawn Drew





Internet
BDollens < at > TXFB-INS.COM

Sent by: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
07/31/2008 10:15 AM
Please respond to
ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU


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ADSM-L
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Subject
[ADSM-L] New TSM Layout





We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?


This message and any attachments (the "message") is intended solely for
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integrity of this message. BNP PARIBAS (and its subsidiaries) shall (will)
not therefore be liable for the message if modified. Please note that certain
functions and services for BNP Paribas may be performed by BNP Paribas RCC, Inc.

What I've seen in the past, in general, is that inbound work looking for a
place to store data will bind to a defined TSM volume that is not currently
in use.
Now, knowing that volume name is an internal key within TSM you can prevent
excessive TSM DB lock contention by breaking that storage pool up into as
many tsm defined disk as you expect to have (max) inbound concurrent
sessions. This will allow each one of them to tie to a defined disk for its
current use.
Having just a single, or limited number of defined disk will impact your
performance.

Dwight

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of
Dollens, Bruce
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:16 AM
To: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] New TSM Layout

We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?

We had 4 TSM server sharing 4 raid groups in one Clariion.

Although we had plenty of LUNs and many spindles, our problem was that we
were flooding the 2 internal paths of the Clariion.

It really cut into our i/o rates.

Gerald Michalak
IBM





"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU> wrote on 07/31/2008
10:05:28 AM:

I went through a number of different configurations on our Clariion. The
best ended up being to take only 1 LUN from each raid group. As many
raid
groups as possible.
My main TSM server has 19 X 200gB raw volumes for its diskpool. Each
volume is from a different raidgroup.

Just try not to use more than one lun from the same raid group. That's
when I ran into performance issues.

Regards,
Shawn
________________________________________________
Shawn Drew





Internet
BDollens < at > TXFB-INS.COM

Sent by: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
07/31/2008 10:15 AM
Please respond to
ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU


To
ADSM-L
cc

Subject
[ADSM-L] New TSM Layout





We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?


This message and any attachments (the "message") is intended solely for
the addressees and is confidential. If you receive this message in error,
please delete it and immediately notify the sender. Any use not in accord
with its purpose, any dissemination or disclosure, either whole or
partial,
is prohibited except formal approval. The internet can not guarantee the
integrity of this message. BNP PARIBAS (and its subsidiaries) shall
(will)
not therefore be liable for the message if modified. Please note that
certain
functions and services for BNP Paribas may be performed by BNP
Paribas RCC, Inc.

FWIW, in TSM 5.5 you can have multiple reclamation processes per pool.
(Doesn't apply to random disk pools, tho)



On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Gerald Michalak <gmichala < at > us.ibm.com>wrote:

We had 4 TSM server sharing 4 raid groups in one Clariion.

Although we had plenty of LUNs and many spindles, our problem was that we
were flooding the 2 internal paths of the Clariion.

It really cut into our i/o rates.

Gerald Michalak
IBM





"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU> wrote on 07/31/2008
10:05:28 AM:

I went through a number of different configurations on our Clariion. The
best ended up being to take only 1 LUN from each raid group. As many
raid
groups as possible.
My main TSM server has 19 X 200gB raw volumes for its diskpool. Each
volume is from a different raidgroup.

Just try not to use more than one lun from the same raid group. That's
when I ran into performance issues.

Regards,
Shawn
________________________________________________
Shawn Drew





Internet
BDollens < at > TXFB-INS.COM

Sent by: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
07/31/2008 10:15 AM
Please respond to
ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU


To
ADSM-L
cc

Subject
[ADSM-L] New TSM Layout





We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?


This message and any attachments (the "message") is intended solely for
the addressees and is confidential. If you receive this message in error,
please delete it and immediately notify the sender. Any use not in accord
with its purpose, any dissemination or disclosure, either whole or
partial,
is prohibited except formal approval. The internet can not guarantee the
integrity of this message. BNP PARIBAS (and its subsidiaries) shall
(will)
not therefore be liable for the message if modified. Please note that
certain
functions and services for BNP Paribas may be performed by BNP
Paribas RCC, Inc.

for STG pools, i create the raid group large enough for 2 LUNs (4TB), and assign each LUN (2TB) to a different STG pool. then migrate or reclaim the STG pools separately. extra effort, but well worth the extra performance. rule of thumb is when the number of spindles doubles performance will increase ~50%.

BTW we only use disk and file STG pools, no tape. reclaim thresholds are well below 30%. all volumes are predefined at 64GB, which is the max on a Linux XFS partition, but i won't want any larger.

john

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:05 AM, in message <OF498A62B5.9406B6F2-ON85257497.00527A49-85257497.0052E61D < at > americas.bnpparibas.com>, Shawn Drew <shawn.drew < at > AMERICAS.BNPPARIBAS.COM> wrote:

I went through a number of different configurations on our Clariion. The
best ended up being to take only 1 LUN from each raid group. As many raid
groups as possible.
My main TSM server has 19 X 200gB raw volumes for its diskpool. Each
volume is from a different raidgroup.

Just try not to use more than one lun from the same raid group. That's
when I ran into performance issues.

Regards,
Shawn
________________________________________________
Shawn Drew





Internet
BDollens < at > TXFB-INS.COM

Sent by: ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU
07/31/2008 10:15 AM
Please respond to
ADSM-L < at > VM.MARIST.EDU


To
ADSM-L
cc

Subject
[ADSM-L] New TSM Layout





We are in the process of designing our new TSM server. As part of this
we are also going to give it new SAN drive space.



Currently we have 661 Gig in our disk pool and we are upping that to 900
Gig. What our questions is how should we partition that? Our current
pool is in 7 partitions but I was thinking more like 3 or 4 partitions.
Are there any pro's/con's with going with fewer disk partitions?


This message and any attachments (the "message") is intended solely for
the addressees and is confidential. If you receive this message in error,
please delete it and immediately notify the sender. Any use not in accord
with its purpose, any dissemination or disclosure, either whole or partial,
is prohibited except formal approval. The internet can not guarantee the
integrity of this message. BNP PARIBAS (and its subsidiaries) shall (will)
not therefore be liable for the message if modified. Please note that certain
functions and services for BNP Paribas may be performed by BNP Paribas RCC, Inc.




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