Just as a point of reference, for our workstation data we keep three versions
for 30 days.  For deleted files we keep 1 version for 60 days.  We've been
doing this for a couple of years and haven't had any problems so far.  Most
of the data we store this way is personal, work documents (letters, forms,
etc.) or programming development items.  Most of our workstation users are
program developers.  I couldn't tell you if this was "reasonable and
customary" for everyone, though.






ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU on 01/13/98 03:51:43 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU @ INTERNET
cc:
Subject: Number of backup copies to keep

Questions: What is a "reasonable and customary"  number of backup copies
to keep? How long should they be kept? We are a University Hospital
environment.

Background: We use adsm to backup a number of Novell, Widows/NT and AIX
boxes. We currently have 900+ gigabytes of ADSM managed data in a
TAPEPOOL.  It is growing at about 100 gigabytes a month.  Our default
policy currently is to keep 15 copies (VEREXISTS) of each file for 18
months (RETEXTRA). We would like to reduce this value to control growth
in the storage pool.

For some of our data we have specific business requirements to keep a
certain number of copies for a certain period of time. My question is
not concerned with this data.  Rather it is directed at user data owned
by many different people on Novell Fileservers. No specific retention
business requirements have been mandated for this data.

Any help would be appreciated.