Lower storage cost through intelligent hierarchy of storage
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager implements a hierarchy of lower-cost storage that can include low-cost disk systems, such as Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA), automated tape systems and optical libraries. As an added benefit, the data can be compressed and encrypted on its way into the hierarchy. As soon as the data is in the hierarchy, it can be seamlessly and automatically moved from one type of storage to another.
Flexible storage pools
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is designed to allow you to decide where your data should be backed up, archived or space-managed to, and where it should reside. You can also take advantage of its unique capability to track individual files, so that files can be moved from one storage pool to another according to your automated policies.
Direct to disk
Storage Manager maximizes your backup window, and minimizes your restore time by giving clients the option to back up initially to a disk storage pool on the Storage Manager server. Backing up to disk means the number of clients backing up at the same time is not gated by how many tape drives you have. Once clients' data is backed up to the disk storage pools, policies automate the migration onto tape or optical. Before migrating out to tape, each client's data is grouped together so it is written in an organized fashion out to tape or optical, thus allowing for faster restores. Storage Manager's robust disk-to-disk backup has been available since its first release. This robust functionality allows for multiple disk volumes to be virtualized into one large volume and it provides automatic migration to the next storage pool based on high and low thresholds and the age of the file.
Collocation
Collocation takes the grouping of individual clients' data a step further by allowing you to specify that a group of clients', particular client's or a particular file system's data should reside on their own tape or set of tapes. By collocating a client's data you expedite restores, as fewer tapes have to be mounted, less tape positioning has to occur and contingency for tapes during simultaneous data restores will not occur.
Reclamation
Expiring files that reside on tape create dead space, which cannot be rewritten, wasting valuable tape space and causing restores to have to be positioned over that space. Tivoli Storage Manager has an easy solution to this—reclamation. Reclamation is designed to be automatically controlled based on polices you set up. As soon as a tape has a certain percentage of dead space on it, the remaining unexpired files are moved to other tape volumes. The resulting empty tapes are then reused for new data—enabling you to make more efficient use of your data tape and helping to improve your restore times.
Offsite copies
Disasters that wipe out your entire IT center happen. Tapes break. To protect against these scenarios, Tivoli Storage Manager is designed to allow you to create, using schedules or manually, copies of your backed-up data. You can then take these copies offsite to protect your backups. Or you can have Tivoli Storage Manager send them automatically over the network to another Tivoli Storage Manager server. Tivoli Storage Manager continues to track the offsite volumes' content, so should a tape need to be brought back onsite because the original tape failed, or because the data on it has expired, Tivoli Storage Manager is designed to automatically notify the administrator.
Migration to new technology
The hierarchy of storage also helps manage the process of automatically moving data to newer media types when it has outlived the usefulness of the current media. This often happens when long-term archive data outlives a particular tape technology.
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