TSM v7.1 – Key enhancements and new functionality

29^th October 2013, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager v7.1 was announced. The software is GA available for download since 13^th December 2013. The DVD media will be GA available per 17^th January 2014.
As this is a whole new year, I thought this would be a good moment to sum up all the new functionality in one place.
A special side note in relation to TSM4VE. Of course, a new release of TSM4VE is also part of the v7.1 package. This means the 4^th major release of TSM4VE within a 36 month time-frame. Good to see all sorts of new things are added again.

The source for this article is the “What’s new in server components” section of the IBM TSM v7.1 Information Center. This release is also added to the TSMBLOG.org links page for your convenience.
Key enhancements in TSM v7.1:

• Server updates
  • Listed as part of server updates, there are various Operations Center updates. The focus is clearly shifting from just a monitoring tool to an administration tool. But the concept of the “morning cup of coffee” and the “single pane of glass” is still around. There is more and more configuration possible from within the Operations Center: one can customize settings for clients and servers, cancel sessions and processes, register clients, etc. The fact that both Tivoli Monitoring for TSM and the Administration Center are not delivered with TSM V7.1, leads me to believe to focus is clearly the Operations Center. And it is, as the documentation states that’s that the way to go as well;
  • Automatic client failover to a target replication server. Each client is configured with MYPRIMARYSERVERNAME and REPLSERVERNAME (along with other options) and can failover when the server is down. This mechanism also works for DP modules (SQL, Exchange, Oracle);
  • Underlying DB2 DB updates to V10.5;
  • Collocation for a limited set of filespaces for a node;
  • File space level migration (for improved server efficiency);
  • SHAREDMEM for DBB (and restore);
  • Now available (my guess would be because of the new DB2 engine): immediate use of space that is added to the TSM server database (so forget about the in-depth vs. in-width extension from before, but that method is still valid). A directory/filesystem added with the EXTEND DBSPACE command will start distributing data across all database directories and reclaiming unused space. Before during an in-depth extension the newly added space would only be used after a DSMSERV RESTORE DB. This can be performed online (uses considerable system resources) or offline with the new DSMSERV EXTEND DBSPACE utility.
• Client updates (only major updates are mentioned here, not minors)

Regular B/A Client:

• Delete backup/expire command now have –objtype=vm to delete or expire TSM4VE backups and filespaces from the client;
• INCLUDE.VMTSMVSS – OPTions KEEPSqllog. This parameter prevents SQL server logs from being truncated when a regular TSM B/A client that is installed on a data mover node backs up a virtual machine that is running a SQL server;
• Automatic client failover to a target replication server;
• Support for vCloud vApps;
• Instant access and instant restore – start working with one, multiple or an entire virtual datacenter while the restore is still running. Essentially, it will trick ESX into thinking it is using its local datastore, but in fact the TSM storagepool is used directly;
• Enhanced Hyper-V support for the new MS API. Because not all things virtualized are running VMware.

TSM for Databases – SQL

• Restore SQL DB from a TSM4VE VM backup;
• Windows PowerShell cmdlets for command-line backup/restore operations;
• Automatic client failover to a target replication server.

TSM for Databases – Oracle

• Support for Oracle on Windows 2012;
• Automatic client failover to a target replication server.

TSM for Mail – Exchange

• Restoring mailboxes directly from Exchange database files (.edb) combined with a restore from a TSM4VE VM backup;
• Windows PowerShell cmdlets for command-line backup/restore operations;
• Automatic client failover to a target replication server.

TSM4VE

• A new wizard for simplified installation/configuration. Looks very much like the lightweight Operation Center look and feel;
• See SQL/Exchange: recover from VM;
• Stand-alone web GUI, vCenter Plug-in is not the only GUI anymore you can give to your administrators;
• Separate stand-alone GUI for protection vCloud Director;
• See client: Full VM instant restore;
• Application awareness: MS Active Directory Domain Controller in-guest protection;
• Better error messages: DP for VMware Recovery Agent messages: FBP-prefix.

Noteworthy:

• The “Performance Tuning Guide” is renamed to “Optimizing Performance”;
• The “Problem Determination Guide” is still around;
• In previous releases, updates to the documentation where clearly marked in the manuals by the use of the | character for each new command or section. Not in the release.
  

A list of new commands (not all new as it turns out): New server commands, utilities, and options.
List of new TSM 7.1 server commands (I removed the ones that are listed as new in this release, but where actually around in TSM 6.3, but not mentioned in the documentation and without any built-in help text. This is more or less common behavior as this was seen over the last releases as well.

• AUDIT LDAPDIRECTORY

Operations Center related:

• DEFINE ALERTTRIGGER
• DEFINE STATUSTHRESHOLD
• DELETE STATUSTHRESHOLD
• QUERY ALERTSTATUS
• QUERY ALERTTRIGGER
• QUERY MONITORSETTINGS
• QUERY MONITORSTATUS
• QUERY STATUSTHRESHOLD
• SET ALERTACTIVEDURATION
• SET ALERTCLOSEDDURATION
• SET ALERTEMAIL
• SET ALERTEMAILFROMADDRR
• SET ALERTEMAILSMTPHOST
• SET ALERTEMAILSMTPPORT
• SET ALERTINACTIVEDURATION
• SET ALERTMONITOR
• SET ALERTSUMMARYTOADMINS
• SET ALTERUPDATEINTERVAL
• SET MONITOREDSERVERGROUP
• SET MONITORINGADMIN
• SET STATUSMONITOR
• SET STATUSREFRESHINTERVAL
• UPDATE ALERTTRIGGER
• UPDATE ALERTSTATUS
• UPDATE STATUSTHRESHOLD
  Kuljeet Singh