IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) is a multi-platform and multi-product family of applications that together provide centralized backup, recovery, and archive management capabilities primarily for mid-to-large Enterprises (an Express version is also available, targeting SMBs). The product family consists both of the core TSM offering, which is itself offered in 3 flavors; and multiple TSM products targeting specific data protection needs (such as automatic management/migration of inactive data, or movement of backup data over a SAN instead of a LAN), and/or the management of data protection on specific applications or platforms (such as databases or application servers).

At the heart of the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager family is TSM itself, which is offered in Storage Manager, Express, and Extended editions.

The Storage Manager version of TSM offers the core features of data backup, recovery, and archive management for multiple platforms; the vendor states that the product supports better than 12 OS platforms, connected via LAN, SAN, or WAN links, to more than 500 offline storage devices (see the vendor's site for currently supported platforms). The platform boasts centralized, Web-based administration and a central relational database for the tracking of data backup information; with automatic data migration, incremental and sub-file backups, hierarchical storage management, policy-based data management, and reporting all listed as features. Additionally, archive management capabilities allow for the copying/storing of multiple point-in-time copies of data, managed for a defined lifetime through the policy-automation engine. Both disk-to-tape and disk-to-disk (as well as disk-to-disk-to-tape) data movement are supported.

The Extended version of TSM adds to the feature set of Storage Manager such functions as NDMP backups of NAS devices and included disaster recovery planning and management features. The Extended version is targeted for use in large Enterprises.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Express version, which is offered for Windows platforms and is targeted to low end SMB deployments. The Express version lacks many of the core features of the Storage Manager (including archive management, hierarchical storage management, and disk-to-tape backups, to name a few), and is billed as providing "...out-of-the-box best practices for small and midsized businesses."

Other components of the TSM family and their basic functions include:

- IBM System Storage Archive Manager, a compliance platform that facilitates the protection of stored data (not allowing it to be changed) throughout its defined retention period

- IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files; CDP for file servers and user endpoints

- TSM for Copy Services, providing enhanced backup and recovery features integrated with MS Exchange backup and restore capabilities

- TSM for Advanced Copy Services (formerly known as Tivoli Storage Manager for Hardware), an AIX component that provides integrated snapshot capabilities with TSM and its data protection components for IBM DB2 UDB, Oracle, and mySAP; as well as couples the hardware- and software-based FlashCopy function of IBM Storage Subsystems (ESS, DS8000, DS6000 and SVC) with Tivoli Storage Manager (requires TSM for Databases or TSM for ERP)

- TSM for Space Management, which moves inactive data to lower tiered storage

- TSM for Storage Area Networks, which allows data movement to be offloaded from the LAN to SAN paths for SAN-connected TSM servers

In addition to these, multiple TSM products are offered for specific application or platform implementations; including TSM for Databases (Oracle, SQL Server, Informix) TSM for ERP (SAP), TSM for Application Servers (WebSphere), TSM for Mail (Lotus Domino, MS Exchange), TSM for System Backup and Recovery (backup, restore, and reinstallation tool that can be executed from either the AIX command line or by using the SMIT menu interface), TSM HSM for Windows, and TSM for Microsoft SharePoint, which provides TSM-based backup and recovery of MS SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and MS Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Windows Storage Server 2.0 and 3.0) environments.

New features of the latest TSM release include:

- The management/storage of encryption keys for TSM clients on the TSM server (in the TSM database) instead of the client

- Support for Volume Shadow Copy Service for MS SQL and MS Exchange 2007

- Integration with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), to coordinate the movement of virtual machine data from the VCB proxy server to tape devices

- Enhanced restore performance via support for concurrent retrieve access, enabling multiple TSM operations to perform simultaneous restore operations

- Re-start support for server-to-server export/import operations

IBM TSM is available now; the new release is expected to be available on November 16, 2007. Visit the IBM Web site for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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