Software components

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IBM® Storage Protect Snapshot is composed of several software components.

Figure 1. IBM Storage Protect Snapshot system components

IBM Storage Protect Snapshot system components.

Application agent
The application agent provides the necessary support to implement snapshot-based backup and restore operations. This agent interacts with the applications and tracks when an IBM Storage Protect Snapshot backup is created for a specific application.
Management agent
The management agent acsd coordinates all the components that are involved in backup, restore, and cloning operations. The agent controls the flow of information among the application and device agents, and other daemons. The agent provides access to the snapshot backup repository. This repository contains information about the snapshot backups and their relationships to snapshot-capable storage devices.
Device agent
The acsgen device agent is a generic agent that interacts with specific adapters for each storage device and the management agent. This agent is also used to send and request updates of the progress and usability information that is stored in the local snapshot backup repository.
The following lists the specific agents for each device type that communicate with the acsgen agent:
  • The CIM adapter fmcima is used with the generic device agent acsgen. This adapter sends commands to the supported storage device by using the CIM interface. Examples of supported storage include DS8000®, Storwize® family, and SAN Volume Controller with static target allocation.
  • The storage adapter for SVCDTA communicates with the CLI interfaces of SAN Volume Controller and the Storwize family storage systems with dynamic target allocation via Secure Shell.
  • The XIV storage adapter is used with the generic device agent acsgen. This adapter communicates with the acsgen agent and issues commands to the XIV® Storage System by using the command line interface XCLI.
  • Third-party adapters that can communicate with non-IBM devices are available. Third-party adapters are not part of the IBM Storage Protect Snapshot product.
  • The N series storage adapter fmna is used with the generic device agent acsgen.
Offload agent
The offload agent fcmcli is used to send an existing snapshot to an IBM Storage Protect server. This agent also calls the generic device agent for mount and unmount operations on a backup system.
IBM Storage Protect Snapshot command line interface
The command line interface fcmcli, is used to issue various commands.