I've successfully used TSM to back up workstations for a customer. But these were true desktops that did not leave the building. They were stationary and always on the network, which lets the normal TSM scheduling modes work well for them; there's really no difference in backing up servers vs workstations, in that case.
Once you get laptops and other "occasionally connected" devices involved, the normal TSM scheduling is a problem, you probably only want to back up documents but not the OS, and "continuous protection" is more likely desirable. But you still don't want to leave it up to the user. (If you've decided there is a need to spend time and money to make backups possible, it must mean you have a reason to make them effective). That really changes the paradigm, and as big a fan as I am of TSM, I think something other than the standard client is a better idea. I have one customer who is successfully using TSM CDP. I'd sure recommend using a separate TSM server for that, as you have stuff connecting and backing up 24 hours a day, and makes it difficult to get things like Expiration to complete in a timely manner when you never have an "empty" window for housekeeping. I think CDP is pretty simple, not a lot of controls. If I got to choose, the first thing I would look at is Fastback for Workstations, which is has design points to deal with these issues and has some interesting sophisticated features. But, I've never personally used it, so just take that as a recommendation to investigate. W -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU] On Behalf Of Skylar Thompson Sent: Monday, December 10, 2012 6:06 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Backing up desktops/workstations On 12/10/12 02:48 PM, Remco Post wrote: > On 10 dec. 2012, at 20:41, Skylar Thompson <skyl...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > >> This is very true. One of the things I forgot to mention is that we >> used to backup desktops. We're mostly in the research computing >> business, so we "only" had around 100 desktops and laptops we backed >> up. That said, the overhead of checking to see why that system failed >> its backups was high - in many cases the desktop would be powered >> off, or the user would have taken the laptop home. > > > There are two ways about this. One is to implement CDP for files: > http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/continuous-data-protect > ion/ > > The other way is to allow users to backup to TSM from their workstation, but > make them responsible for it. Just give them an node account, and tell them > to use it, but do not schedule the backups. Of course, there is no guarantee > that a user has a recent backup of his files when he needs to restore, but at > least you've provided him with a way of protecting himself. > > As for not having any data on the workstation, that is in some circumstances > close to impossible, for example for laptop/mobile users. Having an irregular > backup is better than no backup at all, and having a user be aware of his > role in protecting his and the company's data is always a good thing. > I actually did bring up using CDP as a solution at the time, but it ended up coming down to a matter of costs and staffing - if research computing offered it as a solution, we'd have to pay for it and support it using our own resources. We decided that desktop support simply wasn't one of our core competencies (mass storage/archiving, high-performance computing, etc.), and left the matter with our desktop folks to solve. We also did briefly consider allowing our end users to be responsible for backups but I think that would be a recipe for them never happening. In academia, CYA is key. :) -- Skylar Thompson (skyl...@u.washington.edu) -- Genome Sciences Department, System Administrator -- Foege Building S046, (206)-685-7354 -- University of Washington School of Medicine
