On 4 aug 2009, at 19:56, David McClelland wrote:
Questions flood into my head along the lines of 'what's the difference
between a backup and an archive' (obviously not in a TSM sense) and
if/
how should they be treated differently practically with TSM (e.g. a
seperate TSM Server instance for archival purposes, as some places do
etc).
Dave,
I guess we are in the same corner when I say that people that think
they need 7 year old backups got at least one concept wrong. Now, as
for 7 year (or longer) retention of archives, retaining the data in
TSM is not a problem. Getting it out isn't a problem either. The
problem starts when you try to do something with that data... Thing as:
- do you still have an application to interpret the data
- do you still have hardware to run that application
- do you still have people around that can work with the application
- etc....
There is a definition of a person who can oversee all of these
problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivist , I'd say, if you
need to keep data from over a year, you need such a person involved in
the process.
As for Troy, so you have the tapes, even if they are readable, do you
still have the computer hardware, drives, etc?
/David Mc
Sent from my iPhone
On 4 Aug 2009, at 18:45, Troy Barnhart <TBarnhart AT RCRH DOT ORG> wrote:
Only 7 years? We're in Healthcare. Seven is usually the minimum.
If you're talking Minors, then it is 18+7= 25 years. "Digital
Mammography" & "Research-related" electronic medical records are
FOREVER. There are lots of numbers on time-retention floating
around out there - it just depends on the "governing authority". We
haven't completed our Retention Policy, so we have tapes from
various Operating Systems and Applications from the 1990's.
Regards,
Troy Barnhart, Sr. Systems Programmer
tbarnhart AT rcrh DOT org
Regional Health, Inc.
353 Fairmont Boulevard
Rapid City, South Dakota 57701
PH: 605-716-8352 / FAX: 605-716-8302
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Shawn Drew
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 11:15 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Another perspective on ridiculous retention
"Do I understand you to say you have to keep your NDMP backups
around for
7 years? The tape media isn't even meant to last for 7 years. Do
you
have customers that actually think they will need 7 year old copies
of you
NAS data? That's a tough requirement."
I thought I'd change this to a new topic. I hear this type of
comment
alot on backup forums. From an engineering perspective, it
completely
makes sense. It also makes sense that people in backup forums
think like
engineers!
Just another perspective. When I started with TSM, I was working
for a
software development company named "Tivoli" who obviously cared about
their backup data. The mantra of the backup guys was "Restores are
more
important than backups!" I.E. do periodic test restores, and if a
restore request comes in and conflicts with a backup. cancel the
backup
in favor of the restore.
Several years later, I start working for a bank. After working here
for a
few years, I realize the mantra is now the reverse: "Backups are more
important than restores". Meaning. the main reason we perform
backups
and retain them for 7 years, is so we can show an auditor our
settings and
say we've done it.
We very rarely have to restore anything that old, but we very often
have
to show records of these backups.
One last note, I have been involved in legal discovery projects
where we
actually did have to restore 7 year old data off of old DLT IV
tapes. We
found tapes with dried up BBQ sauce on them and all sorts of damage.
Luckily, between the multiple storage pools we were able to rebuild
all
the data. The DLTs never actually failed due to age (only by a
tomato-based attack!)
Regards,
Shawn
________________________________________________
Shawn Drew
--
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Remco Post
r.post AT plcs DOT nl
+31 6 248 21 622
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