On Feb 25, 2009, at 6:10 AM, Wido Moersheim wrote:

Hello,

I have an Archive Storagepool which is backed up to a server at a
distant location. Now a Customer wants to have his archived data to be
backed up to yet another location, offsite. The data will be offsite
for
about five years. This is supposed to be a one-time operation. I
expect
that if the data from the offsite-location is ever needed, the
tsm-server version will have changed, the old version may be even
unsupported.

It doesn't matter that a given TSM version-release ages out of
support: the data is just as viable as it was when it was created.  As
long as you still have drives which can load and read the media, the
data should be retrievable (by the then higher level of the client
software that would probably be on the customer's computer).  In terms
of human engineering, it is likely that the cast of characters who
devise a program such as this will either be gone or have forgotten
about it after about two years, based upon what often happens in sites.

   Richard Sims    http://people.bu.edu/rbs/