I easily installed Tivoli Data Protection for Exchange Server at the Exchange server's console. To improve the Exchange client's performance, I followed the product documentation's instructions to change settings in a client options file. In a production environment, Exchange Server setup is more complicated; you need to configure specific policy requirements and parameters that define how the system handles backed-up Exchange data.
NetWare client installations were straightforward. I copied the Tivoli NLMs to the NetWare sys: directory from the Storage Manager client CD-ROM, loaded the necessary NetWare NLMs to enable NetWare's Storage Management Services, then loaded Tivoli's client NLM (i.e., dsmc.nlm). To enable scheduled client backups from the Storage Manager server, I loaded a client scheduler.
The UNIX client's installation simply required me to run an install script from the UNIX client CD-ROM. The UNIX client includes a client options file (i.e., dsm.opt) for configuring operating parameters. To enhance the UNIX client's performance, I worked with Tivoli technical support to change some parameters. Automatically starting the scheduler process required adding a command to the /etc/inittab file.
During testing, I was unsure which Storage Manager interface to use for certain tasks. The Server Utilities GUI, which resembles a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in, is a group of wizards that help with Storage Manager Server's setup and configuration. The GUI provides a command-line interface and access to a library of commands that are the power behind the various GUIs and wizards.
Another interface option I explored was the Web administrative client, which impressed me with its functionality and flexibility. When you install Storage Manager, a lightweight HTTP service allows access to the Storage Manager server with a Java 1.1.6-capable browser (e.g., Microsoft Internet Explorer—IE—4.01, Netscape Navigator 4.06 and later) that points to TCP port 1581. Screen 5 shows the Web administrative client interface. The Web administrative client lets you control the Storage Manager server from any PC on your network (including remote dial-up PCs) without installing a special administrative client. Storage Manager on the server controls security.
During the test, Tivoli technical support helped me set performance-tuning parameters and eliminate a crippling timeout problem that arose while I backed up the large data set from the Storage Manager server. Storage Manager uses a diskpool to temporarily store backup data before committing it to tape. The diskpool's size and location have a direct effect on performance. I worked with Tivoli's technical support to create a 9GB diskpool and store it on a relatively inactive RAID 5 volume.
Nevertheless, Storage Manager's performance disappointed me. The product's CPU utilization was on the high side (36 percent during backup and 11 percent during restore), but that utilization didn't translate into fast backups and restores. Tivoli engineers said Storage Manager uses a unique backup database design that performs an initial full backup followed by incremental backups. This "incrementals forever" approach supposedly reduces backup times by eliminating backups of redundant data. Although this strategy eliminates time-consuming full backups, Storage Manager's below-average performance results in incremental backups that are still slower than backups for the other products I tested.
Although Storage Manager has a scalable architecture, it doesn't support important features such as multihosting (i.e., the ability to share a tape library with multiple backup servers). Storage Manager's price is competitive. If Tivoli's base list of supported devices had included the Scalar 1000, the cost of licensing my environment for Storage Manager would have rivaled ARCserveIT's low price. Storage Manager ran backups and restores reliably, but its poor performance overshadowed stronger features such as the Web administrative client and the wide range of supported host platforms.