SPFS - A Filesystem for Spectrum Protect ================================= Mount your IBM Spectrum Protect backup server filespace as a local filesystem

1. SPFS
A filesystem for Spectrum Protect

2. SPFS - Filesystem
A Filesystem for Spectrum Protect.
The product is intended to be used as a backup filesystem with WORM, versioning, encryption, data redundancy, data
reduction techniques, data filtering, data retention functionalities.

3. The issues All of these databases has one thing in common
- There is no backup agent to protect them with Spectrum Protect
But wait?...
We can present an agentless solution, (“SPFS”).
This can protect ANY kind of databases or applications
And this WITHOUT any need of education.
How sounds that?
DBA’s can use the methodology and technologies that they have the
skills to use.
And still knowing that everything is protected in a securely manner.

4. SIMPLE TO USE
# cd
# ls
# rm
# cp
# mv
# mysqldump > /backup/my.dmp
…

5. NO LOCAL EXTRA STORAGE NEEDED

6. NO EXTRA EDUCATION NEEDED

7. WORM
“WORM is an abbreviation that means “Write Once Read Many”, and is mostly known to be used for Compact Disks
(CD).”
The WORM functionality means that a client that writes data to a file can only perform this task once, and can not
change the content of that file. But can read the content many times.
A client that tries to change content of a file, will instead create a new version of that file, see versioning below.
The SPFS filesystem is designed to be used as a WORM filesystem.

8. REMOVINGCONTENT
The data on the SPFS filesystem is secured
A file that are copied to this filesystem can’t be deleted by a client, unless granted by the backup administrator (See
backdel = yes).
BACKUP OBJECTS
ARCHIVE OBJECTS
BACKUPDEL=NO
BACKUPDEL=YES

9. VERSIONING(-n)
Support for multiple versions of the same file.
Versioning is when a client has multiple version of a file.
Can be practical if a client wants to keep multiple versions of a file, and will still be able to open older versions for
reading, comparing or restoring it’s content.
The functionality of this is similar to VSAM in mainframe (generation data set)
If a client save a file using the same name as an already existing filename; for example “important.txt”; than the
older versions of the file will be visualized by parentheses and a relative version number to the last version of the file
version.
important.txt : is the last version of the file “important.txt”
important.txt(-1): is the version that are 1 version older than last version
important.txt(-2): is the version that are 2 versions older than last version

10. ENCRYPTION
Data can be encrypted
Encryption is possible in many different levels in the product.
DATA TRANSFER
All communications between the client and the backup server uses encrypted communication protocol.
ENCRYPTED STORAGE
It is possible to enable encryption before the content are physically written to the media (tape, disk or
whatever media is used in the back end storage attached to the backup server).
CLIENT ENCRYPTION
It is possible to enable encryption for all or selective contents on the filesystem before it is being sent to the
backup server.

11. DATA REDUCTION
Data can be effectively stored using advanced data reduction technique.
It is possible to use data reduction techniques in the product.
DEDUPLICATION
Deduplication is a technique that compares the data chunk with what has already been stored in the backup
system and will instead of storing a duplicate of that content create a relationship to it.
COMPRESSION
Compression is a technique that looks at the content of the data, and try to find repetitive data in the file, and
instead of storing it; store metadata about the content; for example 100x of the word “hello world”

12. DATA REDUNDANCY
Data can be copied and spread over multiple storage destinations.
The content stored on the backup server can be configured to use extra copies elsewhere.
For example extra copies of storage pools; replication etc.

13. DATA FILTERING
Possible to reject clients to store certain data files
Filtering is a technique available in the backup tool, where one can configure which content is not allowed to be stored
on the backup server.
This feature is called include exclude rules, and can be stored on the client or on the backup server using client
optionset.
For example:
If you want to reject users to store *.mp3 files on this filesystem, than one can create a client optionset rule to exclude
this content.
● INCLEXCL ‘exclude /.../*.mp3’

14. DATA RETENTION
Data retention is controlled on the backup server using normal backup administration rules.
It is possible to associate all data or selective data to different retention policies.
For example:
The client wants to have 365 days retention In the “important” catalog, than the backup administrator can associate a
management class that has the retention policy confugured.
● INCLEXCL ‘incude /important/.../* 365DAYS’

15. PERFORMANCE
The SPFS product is a multithreaded application that uses backend workers with a connection pool.
This means that if there is a connection available in the connection pool that already has a working session on the
Spectrum Protect Server, than that connection will be prioritized to be reused for new file operations.
The SPFS product also has a cache that cache metadata to avoid extra Spectrum Protect API calls to lookup
metadata about files and directories.
There is an asynchronous data transfer queue for each worker which improve write and read performance.
The filesystem also has a readahead feature, that retrieves data from the Spectrum Protect Server even though the
data has not yet been requested by the client.

16. Possible use cases
DBA - can use the backup and recovery tool as recommended by the vendor without extra education
- Casandra, MongoDB. MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Progress OpenEdge, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, SAP
Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP IQ Server, SAP SQL Anywhere, SQL Server Express, …
Content Ondemand - can store online documents.
- No need to keep stub files that needs to be synchronized or backed up separately?

17. What are you waiting for..
● SIMPLE TO USE
● NO LOCAL EXTRA STORAGE NEEDED
● NO EXTRA EDUCATION NEEDED
● FAST
● RELIABLE
● ADVANCED FILTERING
● SPACE EFFICIENT
● SECURITY