Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack Overview

Tivoli® Storage Manager FastBack provides several functions for backing up and restoring data with snapshots.

All data is backed up at the disk block level in full and incremental snapshots. After data is backed up, data can be restored back to a disk, or mounted as a virtual volume for an individual file restore.

Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack provides these services with three primary services: FastBack Client, FastBack Server, and FastBack Mount. FastBack Manager is the graphical user interface that you can use from a supported Windows or Linux operating system to manage the FastBack Server.

FastBack Client is a service that runs on client systems (production servers) and backs up used or changed disk blocks. FastBack Client is not an application in the sense of having a GUI or actions that you can initiate. Most activity is controlled by FastBack Server. The server hosts a repository that stores all backed up data that is received from the client systems. The server also initiates snapshot backups, scheduled backups, and defines all options for the backup process. You can also restore data from the server. Access to the FastBack Server is to be restricted to IT personnel.

Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack provides the following functionality:
  • Full snapshots of entire disks, and incremental snapshots of entire disks. A defined set of disks to be backed up concurrently is called a client group. A client group can contain multiple disks from multiple clients.
  • (Windows only) Incremental Forever backup functionality allows for incremental snapshots even after a graceful operating system restart.
  • Advanced scheduling features of backup. Schedules are combined with client groups to create policies. A policy can contain several client groups but you can assign only one job scheduler to the policy. Client group, schedule, and policy creation are all controlled by using FastBack Server.
  • All snapshots use Copy-On-Write. Copy-On-Write ensures snapshot integrity and accuracy while a snapshot is being taken by copying blocks from a disk just before they are to be overwritten by an application.
  • (Windows only) Schedules can optionally provide Continuous Data Protection (CDP). CDP can run a point-in-time restore by backing up changed blocks in real time, between snapshots. CDP is configured per schedule.
  • Data can be restored in the following ways:
    • File-level recovery.
    • Volume restore, initiated by the FastBack Server. A volume restore restores an entire volume from a specific snapshot.
    • Instant restore. An Instant Restore is part of FastBack Mount. Like volume restore, entire volumes are restored to existing volumes. In addition, data can be accessed near-instantaneously while an Instant Restore is in progress.
    • Mount a snapshot to a virtual volume through FastBack Mount. This virtual volume can be its own disk, with its own drive letter, or it can be a directory within an existing real volume. File systems on virtual volumes can be accessed and traversed as if the volume was a local disk. In this way, files can be restored individually to a separate real volume.