Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) 7.1 known issues and problems in Windows clients

IBM has released its next and new version of Tivoli Storage Manager which is IBM TSM Version 7.1 for their customers from 13th December 2013. This TSM V7.1 can be downloaded from Passport Advantage or FTP sites if you are a IBM customer. Nevertheless, how many new versions with new fixes/patches are released for any kind of software it still consists some bugs and issues, so does TSM V7.1. IBM has shared some of the known issues in this new TSM version 7.1 and some fix-packs APARs to the TSM previous versions recently. In this post we will see some of the known issues observed in new TSM V7.1 Backup-Archive Clients in Windows.

Limitations and problems with IBM TSM 7.1 on Windows platforms

1) If you backup or archive data by using Tivoli Storage Manager Version 7.1 client, you cannot restore or retrieve that data using TSM V 6.4 or earlier TSM clients. Check the TSM V 7.1 client compatibility with your existing TSM Server before installing and configuring it. For more information on TSM 7.1 clients and TSM servers compatibility click this link.

2) When trying to take journal based backup with -absolute option it shows the below error 
ANS7559E The absolute option requires specifying the NoJournal option when performing a Journal Based Backup for backing up fs 

The backup works but all files are not backed up. To fix this problem, add the -nojournal option to the command.

3) When you are trying to do a client node open registration with the passwordaccess generate is set in the client option file and if an invalid password is given at the first attempt, the second attempt will also fail even if you give the correct password. You have to close the session and retry the open registration again.

Also Read: Use these Exclude options during backup to save storage pool space

4) If you are using TSM client 7.1 GUI for the initial configuration, the configuration wizard may reports a protocol violation. In addition to that the Domain panel will not list the file systems to select for the domain option. You can ignore these errors and continue with the configuration. Once you successfully completes the initial configuration, you can use the preference editor to set or edit the Domain option.

5) Most of us generally use CTRL-C frequently to abort or cancel the command, but in TSM 7.1 it will give some serious problems. Pressing CTRL-C during command line client operation might result in a TSM client program exception or other unexpected behavior. You can use 'Q' key instead of CTRL-C to abort any command. Stop using CTRL-C from IBM TSM version 7.1.

6) If any log file (dsmerror.log, dsmsched.log, or dsmwebcl.log) runs out of space during a session, writing to that log ceases, but other processing continues. End of processing return codes will reflect all errors and conditions, not just those we were able to log. To prevent this problem, set the ERRORLOGMAXSIZE (for dsmerror.log) or SCHEDLOGMAXSIZE (for dsmsched.log and dsmwebcl.log) options to limit the log size to available space.

7) If the specified maximum error log file size is greater than the available free space on the specified file system and the log is being transitioned from a non-wrapped log to a wrapped log, the following error message will be issued
ANS1521E Failure writing to a Tivoli Storage Manager log or log-related file: <LOG FILE NAME>, errno = 28, There is not enough space in the file system

This is correct behavior. However, the log header record might be incomplete or there may be no "END OF DATA" text marker at the end of the error log. After space has been made available, the TSM client will subsequently treat the log as unwrapped because a valid header record is not found. A new log will be created and this partial log will be written to the prune file. If there is insufficient space in the file system to append an entry to the log, the TSM client will continue to run, but the error message will not be logged.

Also Read: Tips to fix the TSM server startup problems

8) If you try to cancel or abort a command line (encrypted enabled) backup or archive operation when prompted for an encryption key, the whole operation will stops immediately with RC 12 even if there are other files eligible for backup which do not require encryption. So always know the encryption password before starting an encrypted command line backup or archive.

9) When defining a client schedule in the TSM Server, you should use single quotations ('') and double quotations (''") correctly for OBJECTS & OPTIONS parameter if the file specifications contains blank spaces. For example
objects=’"c:\Users\user1\Documents\Some file.doc" "c:\Users\user5\Documents\ Another file.txt" c:\Users\user3\Documents\noblanks.txt’ 
objects=’"c:\home\proj1\Some file.doc"’
options='-preschedulecmd="c:\home\me\my files\bin\myscript" -postschedulecmd="c:\home\me\my files\bin\mypostscript" -quiet'

10) Windows 2008 must be restored using Windows PE 2.0. Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 require Windows PE 3.0 for ASR restore.

11) When running an incremental backup with a UNC file specification, omit the wildcard "*" at the end of the specification. Otherwise the root directory will not be backed up.

Also Read: IBM Spectrum Protect (TSM) Administration Certification Questions

12) VSS image backup might fail after a VSS image restore on small volumes (about 500 MB). On Windows Vista and later operating systems, VSS stores snapshot data on the volume on which the snapshot is being taken. This data located in the "System Volume Information" directory. On a 500 MB disk it takes about 350 MB to create the snapshot. TSM backs up only used blocks during the image backup. The data internal to VSS is also saved as part of the image. During an image restore, TSM recovers all image data. In this case, a second VSS image backup is not possible because of the lack of free space on the hard disk. VSS cannot create a snapshot for TSM due to the lack of space.

13) When installing the TSM scheduler service while the TSM server is down or otherwise unreachable, the node password will not be stored on the client computer. Without a stored password, the scheduler service cannot connect to the TSM server. To resolve this, after the TSM server becomes available, use the command line or GUI client to connect to the server, and enter the password when prompted. This will cause the password to be stored on the client computer, allowing the scheduler service to authenticate with the server. This problem might also occur when you are setting up a scheduler running through a firewall using the server-initiated sessions. In this case, start the scheduler from the command line (dsmc schedule) and enter the node's password when prompted. After the password is updated, stop the command line scheduler (press the 'q' key twice), then restart the scheduler service.

14) The Windows GUI Configuration Wizard for creating a service does not properly set up a service when the user selects the option to run the service under a different user account. The issue is that on Windows, the user that runs the service needs to be granted the "Logon as a service" security right and that is not being setup. You can avoid this problem by going into the MMC services panel and re-entering the users password, after which Windows automatically grants the required right to that user.

15) There is a Synchronization problem between 32-bit and 64-bit client node passwords. Windows 32-bit applications have a different HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE registry tree from 64-bit applications. This means that the 32-bit and 64-bit TSM API are mutually exclusive and their passwords will be stored in different locations in the registry tree. Thus the 32-bit API will not be able to access the password entries generated by the 64-bit API. For example

The 64-bit BA client package will only install a 64-bit scheduler. But another application could be using the 32-bit API. If the scheduler and application share the same node name, then the generated passwords stored in the registry in encrypted form could become out of sync. If the application changes the password, the 32-bit portion of the registry will be updated with the new password, but the 64-bit portion of the registry will not reflect this change. To alleviate password synchronization issues between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows clients, use a separate node name for each client.


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