A quick look at TSM 6.1

TSM 6.1 was released some weeks ago, but I didn't had any chance yet to test this out. Many things have changed in the backup flagship of IBM, so time for a quick glance. First the bad news :

• TSM isn't available on 32bit Linux, and at this time only for 64bit SLES. No word yet if RHEL will be supported in the future.
• the TSM downloads are hefty, ranging from 2 to 5 GB ! So be prepared for some long download times. Many of the packages are replaced by installation suites. TSM also contains a full blown DB2 9.5, the reporting software comes with ITM. Lots of software integration with different IBM solutions, so your procurement division might have lots of fun figuring out the licensing of these software clusters.
• All installations are performed by software installation wizards, which behave stupidly. I tried the installation on AIX, but it kept failing on AIX prereqs, like the AIX Technology Level, and some APARs. The reporting software behaves in the same moronic way. In despair I turned to a Windows 2003 in VMware, where I had more luck in installing everything.

More info later on TSM itself, but I noticed that data dedup is present, but under the form of a separate housekeeping job. You might provide some extensive testing into your TSM 6.1 environment to see if the performance load of D3 doesn't level out the performance gain of D3 in other housekeeping jobs.

TSM now also contains a default reporting, based on ITM. Reporting alone is a download of 2.2GB, containing ISC, ITM and DB2. You can monitor & report about other TSM instances, even 5.5 versions. The reports are pretty basic, but if you're used to TSM Reporter, this might be a nice addition. Basic reporting contains stuff like backup jobs, schedules, database size and distributions of the number of objects inspected vs backed up. Still no real competitor towards professional TSM reporting suites like EMC Data Protection Advisor or Aptare Backup Manager.