Main feautures of the TSM client software

Backup

The backup function of the TSM client software using the graphical user interface offers the possibility to select files, folders or whole drives to be backed up, even for inexperienced users. Under the command line client the command incremental is sufficient to backup the files selected during configuration (in dsm.opt).

With TSM, files can also be backed up encrypted. The encryption of the selected files is done by the TSM client software and requires a password to be set. TSM uses a 128-bit AES encryption, which is considered secure by today's state of cryptography. The data is encrypted on the client and then sent over the network to the TSM server. The server then stores them on the magnetic tapes without decrypting them. The password necessary for decryption is only known on the client and does not leave the client. Therefore it is impossible to get access to the data without knowing the password. For this reason, special care should be taken when handling the password for encryption since it can never be restored or reset in case of loss. The encrypted data will thus become unusable for all time.

Restore

Backed up files can be restored in the Restore-menu, which can be reached from the TSM main menu by selecting the option “Restore”. To restore encrypted files, the password, which was set when setting up the encryption, is required.

Archiving

Archiving is the copying of a file in its current state to an external storage medium. Archived files are not automatically changed or deleted when the original file system changes.

Attention: With TSM an archive is always provided with a lifetime. After this lifetime has expired, the data is automatically deleted without further warning.

Archiving is more suitable for storing files that are currently not needed, with the advantage that these files can be retrieved at any time on the own system. However, the HRZ advises against using the backup storage as the only storage location for important data

Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery is a complete system recovery which happens after a complete system failure. Such a disaster recovery is possible with the standard TSM client software for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Server, but it is not necessarily recommended because this system recovery is highly hardware dependent and time consuming. The standard TSM client provides a solid platform for backing up and writing back data, but if a system backup is really desired, other software such as “TSM For Bare Metal Restore” should be used.