Uninstalling Tivoli Storage Manager Client

One of the legacy ecosystems that I inherited is an IBM Tivoli Storage Manager install. Ours consists of:

5 servers
2 tape libraries (totalling 8x LTO-6 drives)
IBM V5000 storage array

Our site has a 25 year retention policy, driven by customer requirements & contracts. For the past 2-5 years, this install has not been cared for in any way. One of the tape libraries has been online for 65,930 hours… that’s 7.5 years without a reboot! According to the people I spoke with, we apparently migrated away from it a few years ago … but nobody could give me a 100% guarantee that all the backups were properly migrated to the new system, that retention policies were followed, or whether the TSM system could be restored from if the need ever arose.

I decided that the best course of action was to power down the systems and let everything age in place. At least that would give us a chance at restoring data if it turned out something was improperly transitioned.

We have about 10 Windows Servers still with the IBM TSM Client installed and running, even though it wasn’t being used. We have installations ranging from v.06.02.0301 (April 2014) to v.07.01.0800 (March 2018).

I opened up Add/Remove Programs and removed the software… which ended up actually doing nothing other than removing the entry. The TSM services were still installed (and running!), even after a reboot:

PS C:\ > get-service -Name TSM* | ft -a
Status  Name                         DisplayName
------  ----                         -----------
Running TSM Client Acceptor          TSM Client Acceptor
Running TSM Client Scheduler         TSM Client Scheduler
Stopped TSM Journal Service          TSM Journal Service
Stopped TSM Remote Client Agent      TSM Remote Client Agent

More comprehensive methods were clearly needed!

Remove Services
Launch Command Prompt (as Administrator)

sc delete "TSM Client Scheduler"
sc delete "TSM Client Acceptor"
sc delete "TSM Client Agent"

Remove Files and Directories
Delete the main software folder (ie. C:\Program Files\Tivoli). If Windows states that some files are in use, reboot and retry.
Delete the installation folder (ie. C:\tsm_images).

Delete Registry Entries
Launch Regedit as administrator:
Delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IBM\ASDM
Delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tivoli

After a reboot, there was no trace of the TSM Client any more!