TSM - A possible solution for "ANR8212W Unable to resolve address for hostname" error.

If one or more of your TSM scheduled backups are showing as missed and there is an error "ANR8212W Unable to resolve address for hostname" in the TSM activity logs, then the following checks may help you to resolve the problem.

During the initialization of a prompted scheduled backup, the TSM Server performs a reverse DNS lookup using the IP address associated with the specific client node (use q node to verify the IP Address). If this reverse dns lookup returns an incorrect dns host name for this client, the TSM Server will be unable to contact the client and an error "ANR8212W Unable to resolve address for hostname" will be reported.

To test if the DNS lookup of the ip-address is returning the correct hostname type the following.

ping -a "hostname"

(Substitute the name of your client for "hostname").

If an incorrect hostname is returned then correct the problem on the DNS server.

If the DNS lookup is working correctly then it could be a setting in the client configuration file.

In this example the problem is with a windows client.

Login to the client and open the following file in Notepad "C:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\baclient\dsm.opt".

The top of the file may looks similar to the following.

NODENAME		HOST_A
SERVERNAME		TSM_SERVER_A
TCPSERVERADDRESS	192.168.2.5
PASSWORDACCESS 		GENERATE
SCHEDMODE		PROMPTED

Remove the SERVERNAME entry and ensure that the TCPSERVERADDRESS entry exists.

For some reason getting the TSM client to resolve the SERVERNAME entry can cause problems.