IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Version 7.1

Storage device concepts

To work with storage devices, you must be familiar with Tivoli® Storage Manager storage objects and other basic concepts.

The examples in topics show how to perform tasks using the Tivoli Storage Manager command-line interface. For information about the commands, see the Administrator's Reference, or issue the HELP command from the command line of a Tivoli Storage Manager administrative client.

Road map for key device-related task information
Key tasks include configuring and managing disk devices, physically attaching storage devices to your system, and so on. In this document, information about tasks is organized into linked topics.
Tivoli Storage Manager storage devices
With Tivoli Storage Manager, you can use a range of manual and automated devices for server storage. Both direct and network-attached storage provide options for storing data. Tivoli Storage Manager devices can be physical, such as disk drives and tape drives, or logical, such as files on disk or storage on another server.
Tivoli Storage Manager storage objects
Devices and media are represented by objects that you define. Information about these objects is stored in the Tivoli Storage Manager database.
Tivoli Storage Manager volumes
A volume is the basic unit of storage for Tivoli Storage Manager storage pools. Tivoli Storage Manager volumes are classified according to status: private, scratch, and scratch write-once, read-many (WORM). Scratch WORM status applies to 349X libraries only when the volumes are IBM® 3592 WORM volumes.
Device configurations
You can configure devices on a local area network, on a storage area network, for LAN-free data movement, and as network-attached storage. Tivoli Storage Manager provides methods for configuring storage devices.
Removable media mounts and dismounts
When data is to be stored in or retrieved from a storage pool, the server selects the storage-pool volume and determines the name of the library that contains the drives to be used for the operation. When it has finished accessing the volume and the mount retention period has elapsed, the server dismounts the volume.
How IBM Tivoli Storage Manager uses and reuses removable media
Using Tivoli Storage Manager, you can control how removable media are used and reused. After Tivoli Storage Manager selects an available medium, that medium is used and eventually reclaimed according to its associated policy.
Definitions for storage devices
Before the Tivoli Storage Manager server can use a device, the device must be configured to the operating system and to the server.
Planning for server storage
To determine the device classes and storage pools that you need for your server storage, you must evaluate the devices in your storage environment.
Server options that affect storage operations
Tivoli Storage Manager provides a number of options that you can specify in the server options file, dsmserv.opt, to configure certain server storage operations.

Parent topic: Configuring and managing storage devices

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