ADSM-L

[ADSM-L] Best practice for Policy Domains

2008-06-05 15:21:17
Subject: [ADSM-L] Best practice for Policy Domains
From: Shannon Bach <SBach AT MGE DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 14:19:50 -0500
I have always been told that it is easiest to maintain as few Policy
Domains as you can get away with.  Currently I have a standard Policy
Domain which is the Default for all Windows boxes, a Policy Domain for our
Domino TDP servers, an UNIX Policy Domain for all UNIX flavors.  Recently
I was talked into creating a separate Policy Domain for 2 UNIX clients
that backup directly to tape and need special retentions.  Now it has been
suggested that I do the same to use as special retention buckets...even
though not all the different departments have retentions standards as
yet...although hopefully this will be clearer to them in the next year or
so.

My question is this..if we start creating different Policy Domains to use
as Retention buckets could that not turn out to be potentially 10-20
domains until the data owners actually define a retention policy for all
their data?  What would be the pros and cons of doing this vs keeping what
I have and just using different management classes?  Is there something
I'm not seeing in the big picture if we do decide to use the Policy
Domains as Retention buckets?  We have an average of 150 clients with a
mixture of
Windows, Unix and Domino TDPs.

Thanks as always for any suggestions or ideas anyone may have on this
subject.

Shannon