IBM TSM HSM for Windows

"IBM Tivoli Storage Manager HSM for Windows" is an HSM product for Microsoft Windows which allows policy based archival of files out of NTFS and into IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. In its place is left a stub file with offline bit set and a matching reparse point. Access to the file is transparently provided by DMAPI drivers. The purpose of this migration is to allow rarely used or sufficiently aged files to be stored on lower cost media, while retaining transparent access as if the file were stored locally.

Features

In general, IBM TSM HSM for Windows is similar to many other HSM products. This section discusses the semantics of how this particular HSM implementation operates.

Administrators can set up archiving policies, and HSM for Windows automatically executes the policies at predefined times, without requiring any end-user knowledge or intervention. Running in default mode HSM f/Win replaces each archived file by a stub containing a pointer to the archive in which this object is stored. Retention can be specified within TSM to meet any legal or business requirements.

The product can keep any number of versions of a file in the repository and provides administrator functions to retrieve any of these versions. Selected files or complete file spaces can be searched using SQL-like criteria and selected files or the complete results of a search can be retrieved either to their original location in the file system or to a different location in the file system. The basic functionality of user transparency is not affected by this added value as a user-initiated recall of a file is always directed to the latest version.

An administrator may also override migration for specific archiving jobs by specifying that the original data is either kept on disk or completely deleted. This can be useful in particular in a Content Management environment, where files and other types of content are organized by business-related item groups or index classes, and users have access to this repository via a specific client or application.

The administration of HSM for Windows does not require knowledge of the backend repository. The administration tool for OpenStore for File Server provides Windows administrators with these abilities:

• Archives can be organized as logical groups of files from directories and subdirectories
• File groups and file types (extensions) may be included and/or excluded
• Files may be included and excluded based on the date of creation, modification and last access
• Files may be included and excluded based on the size of files.
• Archives may refer to a complete disk volume or any part of a directory structure

History

Prior to 2004, and through 2008, IBM TSM HSM for Windows was known as OpenStore for File Servers^[1], a.k.a. OS4FS. The product was (and still is as of 2011-07-20) developed by Intercope GmbH. In addition to TSM as a backend, OS4FS supported IBM Content Manager and IBM Content Manager On Demand.

Since 2010-06-28, the product pages were removed from InterCope's website, with a small page ^[2] referring back to International Business Machines, Inc. for sales and support.

IBM no longer lists Content Manager as a target on the product page^[3].

External Links

• TSM HSM f/Windows Requirements

1. ^ OpenStore for File Servers on Archive.Org
2. ^ InterCope - What happened to OS4FS?
3. ^ IBM Tivoli Storage Manager HSM for Windows product page