>I have been asked to get confirmation from IBM regard TSM about the last
>access date on a file. We are in the process of implementing SRM which looks
>at a number of attributes on files including the last access date to give a
>report of stale and redundant data. We need TSM to be able to back up files
>without modifying the last access date to enable SRM to function correctly.
>Can anybody confirm whether TSM modifies the last access date even when
>running the compare stage of the backup?

The *SM product has always caused file access times to be updated, in Unix at
least, whenever it backs up a file, because it has to read the thing.  Because
of that we had to architect an elaborate cplv-based facility to make a copy of
the file system before doing the backups on the image, to avoid changing the
timestamps on the original files.  We're now proceeding with an IBM ESS
("Shark") and hope that its new FlashCopy facility will eliminate the need to
do that in the AIX system.  Sun's InstantImage facility in its Data Management
Center hardware is similar.  And there is Network Appliance's Snapshot, which
derives from the like facility in AFS.

Note that the timestamp alteration occurs only on files actually read during
backup.  The task of acquiring file attributes during backup candidacy tests
should not alter timestamps.

   Richard Sims, BU