Bob,

Neither V2 nor V3 offered the kind of protection you want.  With V2, it was
just as easy to select additional items in the domain.  Also, they still
had to select a menu option (called Incremental) that incrementally backed
up whatever was selected in the list.  To use the tree function, they chose
a different menu option.

In V3, they still have to select a menu option to incrementally backup the
domain. However, this is actually safer, because the user can't change what
that domain is without editing the DOMAIN option.

I would also suggest submitting an ADSM requirement (via your IBM rep)
about adding the ability to disable the backup of network drives from a
client.

There is one other thing you can do, but it doesn't really fix your
problem.  By using the "EXCLUDE.DIR" option, you can basically exclude an
entire drive.  For example,
   exclude.dir "La Pomme:*"
will exclude all directory trees on drive La Pomme (the root files will
actually get backed up, but that's another issue).  Obviously, this only
works if you happen to know the name of drive that is being backed up.  But
for those users who keep doing it by accident, you can add it to their
server defined option file.

Cheers,
Brett

>Thank you to Andy, Mike and Brett of ADSM Development for clarifying the
>version 3 GUI/domain situation. I fully appreciate the performance and
>usability implications on which the design was based. Unfortunately, at my
>own site, neither the "Backup Domain" menu option nor the pre-expanded
>tree offer sufficient protection. The onus is still on the user to make a
>selection before launching the backup because nothing is pre-selected as
>it was in version 2. The danger of making a bad selection via the GUI is
>still too great. Most end-users don't understand, and shouldn't need to
>understand, the details. Some will use the "let's select everything to be
>sure" technique and others will try the "I wonder what happens if..."
>approach. Then there are those who are simply accident prone. It will only
>require a few of these to fill my ADSM server database and I certainly
>don't want to clean up that sort of mess. What I would personally like is
>a way for the ADSM administrator to grant or deny backup rights for
>individual clients, as suggested by Cris Robinson. I don't know how this
>should be implemented in detail but perhaps something like a
>BACKUPREMOTE=yes/no attribute akin to the BACKDELETE and ARCHDELETE
>attributes of the node definition.
>
>Bob Matthews,
>University of Geneva.


o------------------------------------------------------o
  Brett Walker                  ADSM Development, IBM
  walkerbl AT vnet.ibm DOT com         tie 276-0265
o------------------------------------------------------o
"That's just my opinion; I could be wrong."
      --- Dennis Miller