<div>All,</div>
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<div>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).</div>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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). </p>
<p><a href="http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=8701">http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=8701</a></p>
<p>Some useful information is linked from this page:<br><a href="http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=8704">http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=8704</a></p>
<p>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). </p>
<p><a href="http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6720">http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6720</a></p>
<p>It offers the gems below.</p>
<p>Confirm Scheduled Backups -- Check the TSM Schedule Log Periodically</p>
<p>1) Check the Schedule Log, /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmsched.log</p>
<p>2) Use a text editor to open the schedule log.</p>
<p>3) Go to the end of the log and look for confirmation that the backup completed. Look for completion summary beginning with the text:</p>
<p>SCHEDULEREC STATUS BEGIN</p>
<p>4) You may find it helpful to create an alias on the desktop as a reminder to periodically check it.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>While it is clear from other information:<br><a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr/">http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr/</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The most promising thing I could find about MIT's TSM installation is this link:<br><a href="http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6721">http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6721</a></p>
<p>Unfortunately, further information about topics like details of training offered:<br><a href="http://web.mit.edu/sapwebss/PS1/training_home.shtml">http://web.mit.edu/sapwebss/PS1/training_home.shtml</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In particular, the TSM user manuals linked off of this page:<br><a href="http://web.mit.edu/tsmsystems/manuals.html">http://web.mit.edu/tsmsystems/manuals.html</a></p>
<p><br>Additional information about TSM (and other back-up options) collected by MIT IST here:</p>
<p><a href="http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6943">http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6943</a></p>
<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/ist/products/tsm/BackupOptions.pdf">http://web.mit.edu/ist/products/tsm/BackupOptions.pdf</a></p>
<p><br>Suggested next steps:</p>
<p>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?)</p>
<p>e-mail address in <a href="http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6721">http://itinfo.mit.edu/article.php?id=6721</a></p>
<p>Specific discussion points<br>- client for Ubuntu machines<br>- Client for AMD 64 machines.<br>- solicit general advice on reporting / alerting possibilities<br>- bonus points - recruit one of their back-up admins to join VIG.</p>
<p>2) Continue exploration of possibilities having to do with utilizing the 11TB of raid array for local backups. (action item for all)</p>
<div>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).</div>
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<div>cjl</div>