I've never had to deal with a situation like this.
But in the past, other people have suggested writing a script that finds all
the day's new files,
creating a tar file of them, backing up the tar file, then deleting it.

Makes it hard for you to find an individual message to restore, but
circumvents the DB growth issue.



-----Original Message-----
From: Luke Dahl [mailto:ldahl AT JPL.NASA DOT GOV]
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 1:50 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: IMAP Mail Server Issues - Management Class Question


Hi All,
    TSM Server - 4.2.1.15, Solaris 9
    TSM Client - 4.2.1.0, Solaris 9

We are backing up an IMAP mail server which creates a new file for every
new mail message received.  The large number of files (new messages)
created is increasing our database size at an alarming rate.  We'd like
to specify a management class that will retain only the last 32 days
worth of NEW messages.  It's my understanding that the Retain Only
Version parameter applies only to inactive files.  Files (messages) are
never deleted from the server (our users basically store their mail on
the server indefinitely) so they never become marked inactive.  So, I'm
wondering if I can somehow specify to only backup the most recent 32
days worth of new files?  I do not want to include all of the files that
reside on the server and I have no way of separating the most recent
files into a separate area.  Basically, if we lose our mail server we
want a method of quickly restoring only the last month's worth of new
mail messages.  The size of the mail server (~400Gb) limits our ability
to provide a restore of all the files in a reasonable amount of time and
is burning up our database capacity.  Anyone else backing up IMAP mail
servers or facing similar issues?  Any thoughts or suggestions are much
appreciated!

Luke Dahl
NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
818-354-7117