Administrator's Guide


How Tivoli Storage Manager Represents Storage Devices

TSM supports many devices for storing data. Devices known to TSM may be devices that exist as real physical devices, such as a disk drive or a tape drive. Devices may also be logical devices, such as files on a disk (FILE device type) or storage on another server (SERVER device type).

TSM represents both physical and logical devices with administrator-defined TSM storage objects: device classes. The device class which you define when you configure devices for TSM, contains information for the management of devices and media. Each type of device requires a device class.

For details about devices that are supported, visit the Tivoli Storage Manager Web site at this URL:

http://www.tivoli.com/tsm

Disk and Tape Devices

Magnetic disk devices are the only devices in the random access category. All disk devices share the same TSM device type: DISK. TSM has a predefined DISK device class.

Tape devices can have a device type of either 3590 or CARTRIDGE.

Figure 3. Devices Are Represented by Device Classes

Devices Are Represented by Device Classes

Files on Disk as Sequential Volumes

TSM allows administrators to create volumes on server disk space that have the characteristics of sequential access volumes such as tape. TSM supports these sequential volumes through the FILE device type.

You may want to use FILE volumes as a way to use disk storage without having to define volumes to TSM. FILE volumes can also be useful when transferring data for purposes such as electronic vaulting.

Sequential Volumes on Another Tivoli Storage Manager Server

TSM allows administrators to create volumes that exist as archived files in the storage hierarchy of another TSM server. The volumes created are a special type of sequential access volume called a virtual volume. Virtual volumes have the characteristics of sequential access volumes such as tape. TSM supports virtual volumes through the SERVER device type. The administrator must define a device class and a server that will store the data.

Virtual volumes are useful for purposes such as the following:


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