DSI VTL Sizing

Considerations and information about DSI VTLs

If requiring sizing for Dynamic Solutions International (DSI) Virtual Tape Library (VTL), send the following information to IBMsizing@dynamicsolutions.com (see attachments for DSI sizing spreadsheet).

1. Customer Name

2. On-prem appliance

3. What VTL/Tape drives are used today

4. If using a VTL,

   1. What is the current deduplication ratio

   2. What LPARs are been saved at what location if there are multiple sites

   3. The average size of virtual volumes

   4. Using 10Gb adapters for replication (Yes/No)

   5. Using Fibre Channel cards for replication (Yes/No)

   6. Using DSI Conductor for migration of media (Yes/No)

   7. Do you initialize media when it expires or do you plan to (Yes/No)

5. Data collected from one of the actions below

6. If using a mixture of VTL and physical and you are planning on continuing the same practices, list control groups that will use physical media

7. These commands need to run in the same job stream.

8. The PRTRPTBRM EXPDATE(*ACTIVE) parameter was introduced in 7.2 and later and requires one of the following PTFs: 7.4 SI72867 7.3 SI72866  7.2 SI72865

If using BRMS backup control groups, load and apply 7.4 SI72867 7.3 SI72866  7.2 SI72865 or superseding PTF and then run the following commands, in the same job stream, on each LPAR and send the spooled file. The spooled file can be zipped to transfer easier.

• CRTDTAARA DTAARA(QTEMP/Q1ARPTRETN) TYPE(*CHAR)

• PRTRPTBRM TYPE(*CTLGRPSTAT) EXPDATE(*ACTIVE)

If using BRMS backup control groups without PTFs 7.4 SI72867 7.3 SI72866  7.2 SI72865 then run the following commands, in the same job stream, on each LPAR and send the spooled file. The spooled file can be zipped to transfer easier.

• CRTDTAARA DTAARA(QTEMP/Q1ARPTRETN) TYPE(*CHAR)

• PRTRPTBRM TYPE(*CTLGRPSTAT)

Send the spooled file in text (.txt) format. (The files need to be downloaded as .txt files, not as .pdf and converted. See the BRMS-Report gathering.docx.) 

If you have multiple systems in a BRMS network, you can use the following command on one of the systems to run the reports for each the other systems

• CRTDTAARA DTAARA(QTEMP/Q1ARPTRETN) TYPE(*CHAR)

• PRTRPTBRM TYPE(*CTLGRPSTAT) FROMSYS(xxxxxxxxx) EXPDATE(*ACTIVE)  CAUTION: Do not use *NETGRP or list multiple systems

Send the spooled file in text (.txt) format. (The files need to be downloaded as .txt files, not as .pdf and converted. See the BRMS-Report gathering.docx.) 

If not using BRMS control groups or not using BRMS, send in the following for each LPAR . You can use RTVDSKINF and PRTDSKINF to get library and IFS sizes.

• Type of backup -  Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.

• Size of each backup

• How often each backup is done - Example: Daily 6 days a week, Weekly once a week,

• Retention of each backup - Example: Daily 14 days, Weekly 35 days

• Start time of each backup

Example

NOTE: Additional considerations need to be made if data is going to be replicated and backups will be occurring at different sites. If this is the case, make sure you indicate which systems will be backed up at each site and what will be replicated