Novell Doc: OES 2: man pages Manpage of tsafs

tsafs

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 22 November 2004
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NAME

tsafs - Target Service Agent(TSA) for the file system.

SYNOPSIS

smsconfig -l tsafs [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION

Novell Storage Management Services (SMS) is an API framework that backup applications consume in order to provide a complete backup solution. The SMS framework is implemented by two main components - The Storage Management Data Requester (SMDR) and the Target Service Agent (TSA). TSA is a component that provides abstractions of a particular backup target. The TSA uses native interfaces to read target data and transforms it to a continuous stream of data objects. The data objects are formatted in the ECMA standard System Independent Data Format (SIDF). The TSA for the file system (TSAFS) services file system targets and provides an implementation of the Novell Storage Management Services API for file system targets. Applications can make use of its features by writing to the SMS API. TSAFS supports the following features that backup applications can take advantage of: 1.Filters that can be applied to a data object stream. 2.Open mode options that backup applications can use to specify how the files must be opened for backup. 3.Selective restores and ability to exclude particular streams in a file. 4.Ability to rename a particular set of resources. 5.Support for incremental and differential backups based on file modified date. 6.Ability to preserve file access date and time. 7.Ability to support file system data, including secondary and extended streams, and complex meta-data. 8.Formats data in a SIDF and therefore any SIDF-compliant software can interpret the data. 9.Supports link backup. 10.Supports password based PAM authentication mechanisms.

OPTIONS

NOTE: tsafs is not a standalone shell command, it is exercised using smsconfig(1). All configuration options are managed via smsconfig(1). All long options (options that have the format --optionname) are case insensitive.

--ReadBufferSize: This is the amount of data (Bytes) read from the file system by a single read operation. This switch is based on the buffer sizes used by the applications. For example, if the application requests 32 KB of data for each read operation, set the buffer size to 32 KB to allow the TSA to service the application better. This value is works well with file system reads if set in multiples of 512 Bytes. The default value is 64 KB.
--ReadThreadsPerJob: This enables the TSA to read data ahead of the application request during backup. This switch is based on the number of processors in the system. This switch can also be used to influence the disk activity based on system configuration. The default value is 4.
--Readthreadallocation: This sets the maximum number of read threads that process a data set at a given time. This determines the percentage of readthreadsperjob that should be allocated to a data set before proceeding to cache another data set. This enables the TSA to build a cache of data sets in a non sequential manner. The default value is 100. This sets all read threads to completely process a data set before proceeding to another data set.
--ReadAheadThrottle: This sets the maximum number of data sets that the TSA caches simultaneously. This prevents the TSA from caching parts of data sets and enables complete caching of data sets instead. Use this switch along with the readthreadallocation switch. The default value is 2.
--CacheMemoryThreshold: This is used to specify the percentage of available server memory that the TSA can utilize to store cached data sets. This represents a maximum percentage value of available server memory that the TSA uses to store cached data sets. The default value is 10% of the total server memory.
--(no)Cluster: Set this to --nocluster if the TSA is running on a non-cluster node or the backup application does not support clusters. Set this to --cluster if the TSA is running on a cluster node and the backup application supports clusters (this is the default). Running a cluster-enabled TSA on a non-cluster node does not affect functionality in any way.
--useCodeset: This is used to set the codeset for backup and restore. By default, the TSA assumes that file names on the disk are UTF-8 encoded. If they are not, TSA skips these files and reports them in the skipped data set log. In such cases, this switch can be used to set the appropriate codeset for backup and restore. The value to be supplied for this switch can be obtained using the command 'locale charmap'.

EXAMPLES

smsconfig -l tsafs --help Displays the options supported by the TSA. smsconfig -l tsafs --readthreadsperjob=8 Sets the number of read threads that the TSA starts per job to 8. smsconfig -l tsafs --readbuffersize=32768 --cachememorythreshold=15 Sets the read buffer size to 32KB and the maximum amount of cache memory that the TSA should use to 15%. smsconfig -l tsafs --useCodeset=ISO-8859-1 sets ISO-8859-1 as codeset to be used for backup and restore.

FILES

libtsafs.so: The library implements all the necessary service functions to back up the file system target.
libsmsut.so: This shared library contains the definitions of all the utility functions supported by Novell SMS.

NOTES

TSAFS uses the Virtual File System (VFS) interface to backup non-NSS file systems. TSAFS uses a kernel module to backup NSS data that is not represented by the virtual file system interface. For loading the kernel module, NSS file system needs to be installed and loaded into the kernel. Use /etc/init.d/novell-smdrd to load the required kernel module for backing up NSS file systems.

AUTHOR

Novell, Inc.

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