Pre-backup considerations (UNIX and Linux)
Various factors in your system or environment can affect the way the backup-archive client processes data. Review these considerations before you back up your data.
- LAN-free data movement
LAN-free data movement shifts the movement of client data from the communications network to a storage area network (SAN). This decreases the load on the Tivoli Storage Manager server. - Incremental backups on memory-constrained systems
Incremental backup performance suffers if the system has a low amount of memory available before starting the backup. - Incremental backups on systems with a large number of files
The client can use large amounts of memory to run incremental backup operations, especially on file systems that contain large numbers of files. - Include-exclude options to control processing
You might have files in your file systems that you do not want to back up. These files might be core files, local caches of network file systems, operating system or application files that could be easily recovered by reinstalling the program, or any other files that you could easily rebuild. - Data encryption during backup or archive operations
The way to ensure data security is by encrypting data. Use data encryption to protect data during a backup or archive operation. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128-bit encryption is the default encryption option. For the highest level of data encryption, use 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) data encryption by specifying the encryptiontype option. - File system and ACL support
Special file systems contain dynamic information that is generated by the operating system; they contain no data or files. The UNIX and Linux clients ignore special file systems and their contents. - Maximum file size for operations
The maximum file size depends on the type of a file system. The backup-archive client does not check any file size limit during backup, archive, restore, or retrieve operations. 
Long user and group names
Tivoli Storage Manager can handle user and group names that are up to 64 characters without any issues. However, names longer than 64 characters require special handling by Tivoli Storage Manager.- Mac OS X volume names
The backup-archive client backs up volumes based on their UNIX mount point name. - Mac OS X Unicode enablement
The Mac OS X client is Unicode enabled. New clients storing data on the server for the first time require no special set up. - Mac OS X Time Machine backup disk
Time Machine is the backup application available with Mac OS X.