Jerry Lawson[SMTP:jlawson AT ITTHARTFORD DOT COM] wrote:
>The only argument that I have heard that begins to make sense for full
backups
>is that a "full" backup allows for the smallest number of tapes to manage.
>Perhaps this is true, but I rely on my tape automation system to worry
about
>that.  ADSM can use a process called collocation to keep files from a user
>together on a minimum set of tapes that generally only "belong" to him, so
>this is not a strong argument, in my opinion.

The problem is that in my case, I'd need an effectively infinite number of
tapes.  I have a single 3590 B11 drive, so there's no way for ADSM to
reclaim unused space (reclaimation requires two drives).  As new files are
being added and changed all the time, while others stay the same, I'd just
keep adding volumes, with the older ones becoming more and more empty, but
never 100% empty.  The only way to clear it out is to do a full backup.

I can't use backup copy groups for disaster recovery either, because to do
this you need storage on the server that's equal to all the storage on all
the clients (!!), since this only works effectively with disk storage
pools.   You may be able to backup tape pools, but (guess what?) only with
two tape drives.
      /
  /  *  /  Alan Hamilton
 *     *   alanh AT primenet DOT com