Thanks, Del:

I'm just looking into this now ...

The guide states:

"When setting the value of the Retain Only Version parameter for
incremental
backups, the value must be (at a minimum) as long as the value set for
the full backup objects to which the incremental backups are associated.
You can use the same management class for incremental backups and the
full backup objects (that are retained the longest) to be sure an
adequate value is used."

Now it states "must be as long as the value set for the full backup".
Must it really? 

Because that is not what I want!

I would want to setup a different management class for incremental
backups that would keep only say 7 versions while this value is set at
35 for my full backups.

I realize that the incrementals would not be able to be restored after
the 7 days while the fulls would be.

This suits what we want, we only want the incremental restore points in
between our full backups for the last couple of days.

Thanks,

Tim Rushforth
City of Winnipeg

-----Original Message-----
From: Del Hoobler [mailto:hoobler AT US.IBM DOT COM] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 2:23 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Exchange Incremental Backup

Tim,

You can also set up different management classes for your
incremental backups. Look in chapter 3 of the 5.2.1 User's Guide
under a section titled:
   "Data Protection for Exchange Version 5.2.1 INCLUDE/EXCLUDE
Processing"
It explains how to set this up.

Thanks,

Del

----------------------------------------------------

"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU> wrote on 10/06/2004
11:36:24 AM:

> We are using Data Protection for Exchange 5.2.1.0 to backup Exchange
2000.
>
>
>
> We currently do nightly Full backups and have the TSM policy with
Retain
> Extra Versions = Retain Only Versions = 35.
>
>
>
> We are looking into doing incremental backups throughout the day to
provide
> for better protection.  We currently have transaction logs and the
Exchange
> DB on separate physical disks both RAID10.  We would need a lot of
drives to
> fail to lose any data here - but we are also looking at recovering
from
some
> type of logical corruption where both the logs and the DB are corrupt
so
we
> would have to resort to the last backup.
>
>
>
> We really don't want or need to keep the incrementals that are done
> throughout the day for more than a couple of days.
>
>
>
> It seems the way to do this would be to change Retain Only to say 2
days
but
> leave Retain Extra at 35.  This way full backups would be kept for 35
days
> but incrementals would only be kept for 2 days.
>
>
>
> Does this make any sense?
>
>
>
> Is there any other way to do what we are trying to do?
>
>
>
> Are there downsides to this besides that any incremental that we do is
no
> good after 2 days?
>
>
>
> Thanks for any input.
>
>
>
> Tim Rushforth
>
> City of Winnipeg