Software components
IBM Spectrum Protect™ Snapshot is composed of several software components.
Figure 1. IBM Spectrum
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 Spectrum 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 storage device-specific adapters and the central
controller 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 storage device-specific agents 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® V7000, and SAN Volume Controller.Note: For Storwize V7000, and SAN Volume Controller storage systems, this communication using the CIM interface applies only in the case of static target allocation (device type SVC); the SVC adapter with dynamic target allocation (device type SVCDTA) uses the CLI interface via Secure Shell (SSH) rather than the CIM interface.
- The XIV® system storage adapter is used with the generic device agent acsgen. This adapter communicates with the acsgen agent and issues commands to the XIV system Storage System by using the command-line interface XCLI.
- 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® V7000, and SAN Volume Controller.
- Offload agent
- The offload agent tsm4acs is used to send an existing snapshot to IBM Spectrum Protect. This agent also calls the generic device agent for mount and unmount operations on a backup system. From the command-line interface fcmcli, you can manually start an offload backup to IBM Spectrum Protect.
- IBM Spectrum Protect Snapshot command-line interface
- The command-line interface fcmcli, is used to issue various commands.