A question came up yesterday about the possible abilities
of OnDemand. Currently we have OnDemand in house storing
various documents for legal (I think) reasons. We are talking
about having a HSM for older user documents. The users have
windows workstations with windows file servers. The OnDemand
system is on AIX. Can OnDemand act as a HSM for older documents,
and if so how do I merge it with the windows environment?

Mike

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
> A question came up yesterday about the possible abilities
> of OnDemand. Currently we have OnDemand in house storing
> various documents for legal (I think) reasons. We are talking
> about having a HSM for older user documents. The users have
> windows workstations with windows file servers. The OnDemand
> system is on AIX. Can OnDemand act as a HSM for older documents,
> and if so how do I merge it with the windows environment?

OnDemand may have changed since I last worked with it (haven't they
relabeled it to DB2 ContentManager OnDemand or something?).

OnDemand uses TSM (formerly ADSM) for storage management, and you
can specify migration policies to move documents to cheaper mass
storage. Maybe this is not hierarchical storage management as you
expect it, since documents are not migrated back to fast storage
when you access them again. Also, as an archive system, it will not
allow you to modify archived files.

About merging with the windows environment, I don't know, but they
seem to have client software now that allows viewing the document in
a web browser.

My personal experience is that OnDemand works best with large spool
files, for which it was originally written. Loading lots of small
files may prove to be painful.

OnDemand is good software IMO, but as always software works best if
you use it as intended.

Maybe the documentation at
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data...p/library.html
can enlighten you further.

One last hint: If IBM tries to sell you DB2 ContentManager, that is
a different product, and although this product is designed to handle
small files, DO NOT BUY IT. Just my 2 cents.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

In article <ciepsi$5af$1@at-vie-newsmaster01.nextra.at>, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
>> A question came up yesterday about the possible abilities
>> of OnDemand. Currently we have OnDemand in house storing
>> various documents for legal (I think) reasons. We are talking
>> about having a HSM for older user documents. The users have
>> windows workstations with windows file servers. The OnDemand
>> system is on AIX. Can OnDemand act as a HSM for older documents,
>> and if so how do I merge it with the windows environment?
>
> OnDemand may have changed since I last worked with it (haven't they
> relabeled it to DB2 ContentManager OnDemand or something?).
>
> OnDemand uses TSM (formerly ADSM) for storage management, and you
> can specify migration policies to move documents to cheaper mass
> storage. Maybe this is not hierarchical storage management as you
> expect it, since documents are not migrated back to fast storage
> when you access them again. Also, as an archive system, it will not
> allow you to modify archived files.
>
> About merging with the windows environment, I don't know, but they
> seem to have client software now that allows viewing the document in
> a web browser.
>
> My personal experience is that OnDemand works best with large spool
> files, for which it was originally written. Loading lots of small
> files may prove to be painful.
>
> OnDemand is good software IMO, but as always software works best if
> you use it as intended.
>
> Maybe the documentation at
> http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data...p/library.html
> can enlighten you further.
>
> One last hint: If IBM tries to sell you DB2 ContentManager, that is
> a different product, and although this product is designed to handle
> small files, DO NOT BUY IT. Just my 2 cents.
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe

Thanks for the link!

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
>>> Currently we have OnDemand in house storing
>>> various documents for legal (I think) reasons. We are talking
>>> about having a HSM for older user documents.

One more thought: Since you have OnDemand, you'll probably have TSM too.
TSM has hierarchical storage management capacities, maybe that's what
you're looking for!

Laurenz Albe

In article <cim4b8$7ac$1@at-vie-newsmaster01.nextra.at>, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
>>>> Currently we have OnDemand in house storing
>>>> various documents for legal (I think) reasons. We are talking
>>>> about having a HSM for older user documents.
>
> One more thought: Since you have OnDemand, you'll probably have TSM too.
> TSM has hierarchical storage management capacities, maybe that's what
> you're looking for!
>
> Laurenz Albe

I do and did think about TSM, but though it does do HSM, it doesn't
do the management of staging older files out to slower storage. It seeems
to work great for backups, but not for users.

Mike

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
>> One more thought: Since you have OnDemand, you'll probably have TSM too.
>> TSM has hierarchical storage management capacities, maybe that's what
>> you're looking for!
>
> I do and did think about TSM, but though it does do HSM, it doesn't
> do the management of staging older files out to slower storage. It seeems
> to work great for backups, but not for users.

This is getting off-topic, and there may be a misunderstanding, but what
about defining a management class with

def mgm <domain> <polset> hsm spacemgtech=auto automigno=30 migdest=slow

Then it should migrate all files older than 30 days to a slow storage pool.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

In article <cimmfg$l16$1@at-vie-newsmaster01.nextra.at>, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
>>> One more thought: Since you have OnDemand, you'll probably have TSM too.
>>> TSM has hierarchical storage management capacities, maybe that's what
>>> you're looking for!
>>
>> I do and did think about TSM, but though it does do HSM, it doesn't
>> do the management of staging older files out to slower storage. It seeems
>> to work great for backups, but not for users.
>
> This is getting off-topic, and there may be a misunderstanding, but what
> about defining a management class with
>
> def mgm <domain> <polset> hsm spacemgtech=auto automigno=30 migdest=slow
>
> Then it should migrate all files older than 30 days to a slow storage pool.
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe

That's a great idea. How would the users get it back when they asked for it?

Mike

Mike <mikee@mikee.ath.cx> wrote:
>> def mgm <domain> <polset> hsm spacemgtech=auto automigno=30 migdest=slow
>>
>> Then it should migrate all files older than 30 days to a slow storage pool.
>
> That's a great idea. How would the users get it back when they asked for it?

Transparently by accessing the stub file on the client.

It's some time since I've worked with TSM, so forgive if I am wrong,
but AFAIK accessing a file from a TSM client works the same, even after
the file has been moved to another, slower storage pool.

So, after 30 days, your file is in storage pool 'slow', and there is
a stub file on the client. If there is a nextstgpool 'slower' for this
storage pool, then after some time the file ends up in 'slower'.
The stub file on the client remains. When you access it, the file is
fetched from 'slower'.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe