Question & Answer
Question
Cause
The following FAQ questions and answers discuss common questions and solutions for issues that are related to the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite and IBM Spectrum Protect Suite with Archive Option capacity licensing programs.
Answer
IBM Spectrum Protect provides two capacity-based pricing programs. These programs are referred to as IBM Spectrum Protect Suite and IBM Spectrum Protect Suite – Archive Option. This page describes measurements for IBM Spectrum Protect. The IBM Spectrum Protect Suite includes IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, IBM Spectrum Protect Snapshot, and IBM Spectrum Protect Copy Data Management. The calculations described in this page do not include measurements for those components.
| License Program | Link |
|---|---|
|
IBM Spectrum Protect Suite
Measurement description for IBM Spectrum Protect
|
IBM Spectrum Protect Measurement |
|
IBM Spectrum Protect Suite with Archive Option
Measurement description for IBM Spectrum Protect with Archive Option
|
IBM Spectrum Protect with Archive Option Measurement |
Considerations
- Output from the QUERY OCCUPANCY, AUDIT OCCUPANCY, QUERY DEDUPSTATS, or QUERY LICENSE commands is not valid for use as a capacity measurement for the IBM Spectrum Protect backend capacity-based licensing programs. These commands access different data from the database that is being reported on and use different algorithms to derive measurement data. Therefore, the value that is reported from these commands might be different from the SUR occupancy information that is reported in the Operations Center or when you issue the QUERY STATUS command or the SELECT * FROM STATUS command.
- Errors that are identified in the SUR occupancy calculation can be resolved by using an APAR, and the fix is provided in a maintenance fix pack. To determine whether there are issues with the capacity reporting that is provided by IBM Spectrum Protect for the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite and IBM Spectrum Protect Suite with Archive option license programs, review information in IBM Spectrum Protect Downloads - Latest Fix Packs and interim fixes.
- If you think that the reported capacity value for your environment is inaccurate, open a support case so that the issue can be investigated and diagnosed. If a known issue is identified that is fixed in a newer fix-pack, you might be required to upgrade to the newer code level to obtain the fix.
- In previous versions of the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite and IBM Spectrum Protect Suite with Archive option license programs, capacity measurement scripts were supported, along with reports that were available by using the IBM Spectrum Protect Operations Center. The scripts were provided to assist with cases where the IBM Spectrum Protect server was not able to calculate the capacity value or when not all information that is needed to make the calculation was available to the IBM Spectrum Protect server. However, only the IBM Spectrum Protect server can accurately calculate the value for IBM Spectrum Protect Suite and IBM Spectrum Protect Suite with Archive option license programs. The IBM Spectrum Protect Operations Center collects capacity measurements only from the monitored “spoke” servers and provides this information on the “license” pages in the interface along with providing reports with this information. To collect accurate capacity information for your license, issue the QUERY STATUS command on the IBM Spectrum Protect server or use the information that is provided by the Operations Center.
Question
I have the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite. What tools are available to help me measure capacity in IBM Spectrum Protect server primary storage pools?
Answer
Measuring capacity
To determine your backup and archive usage, which is the total TB stored in your IBM Spectrum Protect primary storage pools, see the IBM Spectrum Protect Operations Center License Back-end page. Alternatively, view the backup and archive usage in TB by issuing the IBM Spectrum Protect administrative server QUERY STATUS command or SELECT * FROM STATUS command.
How data is measured
The following rules are used when the data is measured:
- Measures the amount of deduplicated data in a deduplicated primary storage pool, where IBM Spectrum Protect has deduplicated data. This measurement shows the cost efficiency of using IBM Spectrum Protect data deduplication when the number of TB in primary storage pools is reduced.
- Excludes copy pool and active data pools. These storage pools are copies of primary storage pools and not measured for capacity reporting purposes.
- Excludes data from IBM Spectrum Protect HSM for Windows and IBM Spectrum Protect for SharePoint. These OEM products are sold on a Processor Value Unit (PVU) basis and are not included in the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite.
- Measures virtual volume source data (excluding target data). IBM Spectrum Protect allows a server (a source server) to store the results of database backups, export operations, storage pool operations, and a DRM PREPARE command on another IBM Spectrum Protect server (a target server). The data is stored as virtual volumes. When querying IBM Spectrum Protect, virtual volume data appears in primary storage pools in both the target and the source server. The data that is stored on the target server is a Disaster Recovery (DR) copy of data and is not measured.
- Excludes data that is replicated by IBM Spectrum Protect for Workstations to IBM Spectrum Protect and excludes data that was backed up from an IBM Spectrum Protect for Workstations server that uses an IBM Spectrum Protect client. This data represents a copy of data on the IBM Spectrum Protect for Workstations server that is already measured.
- Excludes other duplicated data. Other duplicated data represents data that is reported in primary storage pools, which is a copy of data that is already stored by other means. For example, the table of contents for a backup set is stored in a primary storage pool. The table of contents is metadata that describes the data on a backup set so this data is excluded from the measurement.
- Excludes data from client nodes that are configured as REPL_MODE of RECEIVE or SYNCRECEIVE on the target server where IBM Spectrum Protect is configured to perform server to server replication. This exclusion applies only if IBM Spectrum Protect server to server replication is used and the data is managed by the same policies.
Question
I have IBM Spectrum Protect Suite with the archive option. What tools are available to help me measure capacity in IBM Spectrum Protect server primary storage pools?
Answer
Answer
Measuring capacity
To determine your archive usage, which is the total TB stored in your IBM Spectrum Protect primary storage pools, see the IBM Spectrum Protect Operations Center License Back-end page. Alternatively, view the backup and archive usage in TB by issuing the IBM Spectrum Protect administrative server QUERY STATUS command or SELECT * FROM STATUS command.
How data is measured
The following rules are used when the data is measured:
- Measures the data in primary container storage pools. The measurement reports the license capacity based on the data that is written to the storage after data reduction is performed. The container storage pools automatically deduplicate the data and can optionally be configured to compress the data as well. For example, if an object storage to IBM Spectrum Protect was originally 10 MB but after deduplication only 3 MB is stored, then 3 MB is reported in the capacity value. Similarly, in this example, if the 3 MB was further reduced to 1.8 MB because of compression, than the reported value for the capacity measurement would be 1.8 MB.
- Excludes copy pool and active data pools. These storage pools are copies of primary storage pools and not measured for capacity reporting purposes.
- Excludes data from IBM Spectrum Protect HSM for Windows and IBM Spectrum Protect for SharePoint. These OEM products are not included in the IBM Spectrum Protect Suite.
- Measures virtual volume source data (excluding target data). IBM Spectrum Protect allows a server (a source server) to store the results of database backups, export operations, storage pool operations, and a DRM PREPARE command on another IBM Spectrum Protect server (a target server). The data is stored as virtual volumes. When querying IBM Spectrum Protect, virtual volume data appears in primary storage pools in both the target and the source server. The data that is stored on the target server is a Disaster Recovery (DR) copy of data and is not measured.
- Excludes data that is replicated by FastBack to IBM Spectrum Protect and excludes data that was backed up from a FastBack server by using an IBM Spectrum Protect client. This data represents a copy of data on the FastBack server that is already measured.
- Excludes other duplicated data. Other duplicated data represents data that is reported in primary storage pools, which is a copy of data that is already stored by other means. For example, the table of contents for a backup set is stored in a primary storage pool. The table of contents is metadata that describes the data on a backup set so this data is excluded from the measurement.
- Excludes data from client nodes that are configured as REPL_MODE of RECEIVE or SYNCRECEIVE on the target server where IBM Spectrum Protect is configured to perform server to server replication.
- Archive data that resides on tape or a virtual tape library (VTL) is counted as archive. Archive data that resides in a primary storage pool of a device type other than tape or VTL is counted as primary (non-archival) capacity.
- Data from Data Protection for SAP (also known as IBM Spectrum Protect for ERP) is counted as primary capacity regardless of what kind of primary storage pool it resides in.
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Document Information
Modified date:
10 March 2022
UID
ibm16551424