A work-around for running more complex or external scripts

As we all know the capability of the TSM/SP scripting language is “limited”, not to say very poor. So (i assume) all TSM/SP admins have created a bunch of external scripts using bash, perl or even powershell to monitor and manage TSM/SP. The problem with such scripts is indeed, they are not controlled by TSM/SP itself and therefore they will also run if a server is in maintenance as they consist of commands run using the admin CLI and so they are treated as if an admin has issued them manually :-(

Unfortunately the IBM got many times the feedback to improve the scripting capability, but does not do it.

A workaround

Already 2008 this problem was mentioned on the ADSM-L mailing list, and also that time a workaround was provided:

  1. install the TSM/SP Client on the server itself
  2. register a node within each TSM/SP instance representing itself
  3. configure schedules just for executing external commands / scripts