[Olpc-sysadmin] back-up options research

Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com
Tue Dec 9 17:33:30 EST 2008


All,

Several weeks ago in the VIG meeting I expounded on the joys of having a
very vocal back-up system (e.g. one that sent e-mails about success or
failure of backups).  I use a locally-hosted Veritas (now Symantec) BackUp
Exec system and find great comfort in the ability to stay on top of the
back-up situation by monitoring the stream of messages it sends out (to the
IT group helpdesk e-mail account at my firm).

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to follow-up on that action item for last
week and so I am doing so belatedly (better late than never).

The situation as I understand it is that OLPC's primary back-up process
occurs through the installation of TSM (IBM Tivoli Storage Manager) client
software which performs back-ups to a hosted tape Library at MIT. I assume
that OLPC has an Enterprise account for TSM with MIT IST (as defined on the
page below).

http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=8701

Some useful information is linked from this page:
http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=8704

In particular, their answer on how to confirm that back-ups have run (on
Linux systems) links to this article (which also includes set-up
information).

http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6720

It offers the gems below.

Confirm Scheduled Backups -- Check the TSM Schedule Log Periodically

1) Check the Schedule Log, /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmsched.log

2) Use a text editor to open the schedule log.

3) Go to the end of the log and look for confirmation that the backup
completed. Look for completion summary beginning with the text:

SCHEDULEREC STATUS BEGIN

4) You may find it helpful to create an alias on the desktop as a reminder
to periodically check it.

This is not particularly helpful (from an automation point-of-view).
Writing something kludgy to do this doesn't seem like the right way to go
about this.

While it is clear from other information:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr/

that TSM is indeed a fully featured backup system, including the capability
to send out e-mail notifications about back-up status, those features are
controlled by MIT IST admins and not necessarily available to OLPC clients.

The most promising thing I could find about MIT's TSM installation is this
link:
http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6721

Unfortunately, further information about topics like details of training
offered:
http://web.mit.edu/sapwebss/PS1/training_home.shtml

and a number of other other details are hidden behind MIT firewalls and I
could not access them.  OLPC staff (or MIT affiliates) may be able to find
more.

In particular, the TSM user manuals linked off of this page:
http://web.mit.edu/tsmsystems/manuals.html


Additional information about TSM (and other back-up options) collected by
MIT IST here:

http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6943

http://web.mit.edu/ist/products/tsm/BackupOptions.pdf


Suggested next steps:

1) Initiate conversation with MIT IST to gain fuller understanding of
possibilities within their hosted TSM system. (possible action item for
hhardy or dogi as it may require customer identification?)

e-mail address in http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6721

Specific discussion points
- client for Ubuntu machines
- Client for AMD 64 machines.
- solicit general advice on reporting / alerting possibilities
- bonus points - recruit one of their back-up admins to join VIG.

2) Continue exploration of possibilities having to do with utilizing the
11TB of raid array for local backups. (action item for all)
One hackery way of doing things is to use one tool (to be determined) to do
local backups (giving configurable features desired) and then using TSM to
backup the local backup copy (not worrying about alerting on that).


cjl
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