On Friday 23 May 2003 11:08, DFrance wrote:
> With all due respect, I supported an international account exactly this
> way; as an interim solution (while they ordered up a second tape drive) at
> 3 of their 12 sites, using policyset swap to re-drive the full-backups (ie,
> change copygroup to "absolute", from "modified") was just what we needed,
> so they could run (almost) lights-out for a month at a time, using
> incrementals after each monthly full.

As with most of TSM, there is no one "right way". Just lots of flexibility. :)

Yes, swapping policy sets will work, but you run the risk of someone updating 
one of the "twin" policy sets and not the other. Then when the policy sets 
are swapped, your data may be rebound (if a MC doesn't exist) or retained (or 
not) for an unexpected period.

If you were going to do this I'd prefer to copy the "active" set to a 
temporary name, change the copygroup to/from absolute/modified, and then copy 
it back to the "active" set.

But I'm still hesitant about swapping policy sets because it's not "obvious".

> If you've got the bandwidth to run the full-backup over a weekend, this
> fits the bill;  if not (due to multiple nodes), then you'll need to work
> harder and support multiple node-names per client machine... one for daily
> INCR, one for weekly INCR --- Hmmm, maybe that's a better scenario for your
> situation, eh?  (My customer's scenario worked best because it allowed us
> to do en-mass swap of scratch tapes for old backup tapes... which
> facilitated remote restore from the help desk, transparently to the
> help-desk folks!)

Also, if you use two node names for the "daily incr" and "weekly full" 
backups, they can use two separate management classes, with different 
retention periods.

So, when your management decides they want to keep the full backups for a 
month/year, and the incremental backups for only a week/month, you can.

Alternatively, have you considered keeping *all* the primary backups on disk 
(mmmm, lots of disk :) and only sending the copy pool versions to tape for 
offsite storage? Or maybe only sending backup set versions to tape (which can 
be retained and restored separately from the TSM server?

But, of course, the "correct" answer is to but another tape drive.

Regards,
Steven P.

-- 
Steven Pemberton                                      Mobile: +61 4 1833 5136
Innovative Business Knowledge                   Office: +61 3 9820 5811
Senior Enterprise Management Consultant    Fax: +61 3 9820 9907