Hi Marc.

So it is not theoretically possible to isolate the permission part and keep
that versioned in the TSM database? Is there any other way to avoid the
problem mentioned(dedup would take care of the doubling of backup data but
is not applicable to our setup).

Hans Chr.

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 1:58 PM, Marc Lanteigne <marclanteigne AT ca.ibm DOT 
com>
wrote:

> Hi Hans,
>
> File permissions are part of the file, on the filesystem, they are stored
> inside the file.  When backed up, the whole file is backed up, which
> includes the permissions.  The permissions are not stored in the server
> database.  That's why the entire file is backed up.  It would be different
> if file permissions were stored outside the file, then Spectrum Protect
> could backup just the permissions.
>
> Also, the permissions are needed for the restore.  So if an admin does a
> mistake while updating the permissions, they can restore the previous
> version with the previous permission.  If the permissions were updated on
> the file without backing it up, it would be impossible to restore the
> previous permissions.
>
> It would also be near impossible to update permissions on existing backups.
> Tapes are sequential, so it's impossible to do an update to the file on an
> existing tape.  The same applies for file pools.  Furthermore, the server
> doesn't know what the data is, it's unaware of permissions, it's just
> storing bytes for the client.
>
> -
> Thanks,
> Marc...
> ________________________________________________________
> Marc Lanteigne
> Accelerated Value Specialist for Spectrum Protect
> 416.478.0233 | marclanteigne AT ca.ibm DOT com
> Office Hours:  Monday to Friday, 7:00 to 16:00 Eastern
>
> Follow me on: Twitter, developerWorks, LinkedIn
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hans Christian Riksheim [mailto:bullhcr AT GMAIL DOT COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 8:48 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: [ADSM-L] Backup of file attributes Windows
>
> When our customers changes permissions on their file servers there is total
> chaos with new full backup of everything and no practical method to get rid
> of the extra backup data. I think our customers should be able to do this
> without paying twice as much for their backups.
>
> From what I have heard TSM couldn't just update these files because there
> is too much overhead keeping this information in the database. However in
> the meantime TSM has gone from the proprietary database in v5 to a full DB2
> which should handle this well.
>
> It would be nice if IBM took a look at this problem and came up with a
> solution. Don't know if other TSM admins think this is an issue though.
>
> Hans Chr. Riksheim
>