There is a good reason it keeps coming up: legitimate business
requirements.

The suits (auditors, IRS, corp counsel, HIPAA, etc) demand to be able to
be able to reproduce any datum at given intervals for given durations.
Most often, that translates to restoring files that may change every day
to "month end" state for somewhere between 1 and 7 years.  Sometime they
can identify the kinds of data they want, but it is expensive to
accurately identify the list of all files/directories required, so usually
you get a vague wave to "save everything".  And of course, it's their
data, not yours, they have a right to keep as much as they want.  Telling
them that TSM doesn't support their requirement just invites other
software vendors in the door since *they* handle this particular
requirement with ease (on paper).

The number of days you can reasonably keep in an incremental backup
usually doesn't extend to forever.  Archives sometimes don't cut it,
either in their traditional form or the instant form.  You can't stand to
move that much data or use that many tapes - that's why you went
incremental forever in the first place.  I really just to do some
operation that marks the current active version with a longer guaranteed
retention, without changing the retention of anything else.

I don't want to restart the perennial discussion of truly long term
archival storage.  It's reasonable to expect a backup system to maintain
internal compatibility for 7 years, and there are techniques for migrating
the data to newer media.

Just my 5 cents worth (inflation).
_____________________________
William Mansfield
Senior Consultant
Solution Technology, Inc





"Mr. Lindsay Morris" <lmorris AT SERVERGRAPH DOT COM>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
04/04/2002 10:04 AM
Please respond to lmorris


        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        cc:
        Subject:        Re: Monthly Backups, ...again!


This keeps coming up.  It's the hardest thing about TSM, to sell users on
the way it works.

Tivoli's Storage Vision whitepaper has a comparison of the benefits you
get
by NOT using this Grandfather-father-son technique, but I wish somebody at
Tivoli would come up with some better assistance to help us sell the
incremental-forever -ooops, progressive backup methodolgy - to non-techie
users.  (Maybe it's there and I just don't know where to find it...?)

I think Kelly Lipp has a good article on archiving and when it's sensible
-
maybe he'll post that link here again.
maybe he'll post that link here again.

Also, maybe some users have specific oddball scenarios they have run into
that require surprising policy settings. It would be interesting to hear
about those.  Like, the user who goes on vacation for two weeks, and
manages
to trash here email file the day she leaves, doesn't notice it, Lotus
touches the damaged file every day so it gets backed up again, and they
don't keep 14 versions, so she gets back and the only good version (15
days
old) has rolled off (expired).

---------------------------------
Mr. Lindsay Morris
Mr. Lindsay Morris
CEO, Servergraph
www.servergraph.com
859-253-8000 ofc
425-988-8478 fax


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU]On Behalf Of
> Marc Levitan
> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 8:51 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: Monthly Backups, ...again!
>
>
> A question was brought up while discussing retention policies.
>
> Currently we have the following retentions:
>
> Policy    Policy    Mgmt      Copy      Versions Versions   Retain
Retain
> Domain    Set Name  Class     Group         Data     Data    Extra Only
> Name                Name      Name        Exists  Deleted Versions
Version
> --------- --------- --------- --------- -------- -------- --------
-------
> COLD      ACTIVE    COLD      STANDARD         2        1        5 30
> COLD      ACTIVE    COLD      STANDARD         2        1        5 30
>
> NOVELL    ACTIVE    DIRMC     STANDARD        30        1      120 365
> NOVELL    ACTIVE    STANDARD  STANDARD        30        1      120 365
>
> RECON     ACTIVE    DIRMC     STANDARD        36        3       75 385
> RECON     ACTIVE    MC_RECON  STANDARD        26        1       60 365
>
> STANDARD  ACTIVE    DIRMC     STANDARD        26        1       60 365
> STANDARD  ACTIVE    STANDARD  STANDARD        26        1       60 365
>
>
> UNIX      ACTIVE    MC_UNIX   STANDARD        30        1       60 30
>
>
> I believe that this provides for daily backups for over a month.
>
> There was a request to have the following:
> 1)   Daily backups for a week.
> 2)   Weekly backups for a month.
> 3)   Monthly backups for a year.
>
> I believe we are providing 1 & 2.  We are providing daily backups for a
> month.
>
> How can I provide monthly backups for a year?
> I know that I could take monthly archives, but this would exceed
> our backup
> windows and would increase our resources ( db, tapes, etc.)
> Also, I know we could lengthen our retention policies.
> Also we could create backup sets. (tons of tapes!)
>
> How are other people handling this?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Marc Levitan
> Storage Manager
> PFPC Global Fund Services
>


_____________________________
William Mansfield
Senior Consultant
Solution Technology, Inc