IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Application Servers is a software module that works with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager to better protect the infrastructure and application data and improve the availability of WebSphere Application Servers. It works with the WebSphere Application Server software to provide an applet GUI to do reproducible, automated online backup of a WebSphere Application Server environment, including the WebSphere administration database (DB2 Universal Database), configuration data, and deployed application program files. Changes to the WebSphere environment, such as the addition of applications, are automatically detected and included in the data backup schedule to help keep backed-up data current. If data loss or data corruption occurs, Storage Manager for Application Servers can automatically restore the necessary data from offline storage to the WebSphere Application Server environment's online storage.

Data Protection for WebSphere Application Servers provides the following features:

• Data Integrity - The dynamic extraction of WebSphere Application Server configuration information ensures that all critical data is backed up. The dynamically generated XML file contains all required information to detect all WebSphere Application Servers in the backed up domain. The administration database, as well as all WebSphere application data, are included.
   
• WebSphere Application Server Online Backup/Restore - This IBM Tivoli product provides the ability to backup all WebSphere Application Servers online (hot backup). This means that the WebSphere administration database and all the WebSphere Application Servers are backed up during normal operation. No server shutdown is required. Therefore, this product supports 24x7 availability of the complete WebSphere environment. Furthermore, high backup/restore performance helps to minimize availability impacts, even in disaster recovery scenarios.
   
• Fully Automated Backup Process - Data Protection for WebSphere Application Servers ensures a fully automated backup process.  The ability to configure scheduled backups together with the automatic detection of all linked WebSphere Application Servers eliminates the need to provide customer maintained scripts. Manual interventions are no longer required because all actions are triggered from a central point of control.
   
• LAN Free Support - Data Protection for WebSphere Application Servers has the capability of performing the backup and restore directly through the SAN, instead of going through the LAN. In a SAN environment, this product's data movers can be directly connected over the SAN to the respective storage devices. In this scenario, the data are transferred over the SAN, whereas the metadata flow over the LAN to the Tivoli Storage Manager Server. The major benefits of this option include: (1) Offloading the LAN from network traffic by sending the data directly through the SAN and (2) Using a centralized TSM server, while keeping the read/write load on WebSphere Application Servers.