Networker

[Networker] Questions on changing retention policy?

2004-05-12 10:45:23
Subject: [Networker] Questions on changing retention policy?
From: George Sinclair <George.Sinclair AT NOAA DOT GOV>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 10:46:47 -0400
Hello,

We've been using a retention policy of 1 year (default) for a long time
now, but our actual "physical" recycling policy is 6 months for non-FUL
pool tapes. Fulls are sent to FUL pool and all incrementals and level
backups are sent to ATL pool. All tapes are physically write-protected
as soon as they're taken out of the libraries, and they are NEVER put
back in the libraries unless doing a recover. All FUL pool tapes go off
site and are not recycled until at least 1 year but typically much
longer. We normally do not worry about dependencies as shown in volumes
listing. In just about all cases, any tape we'd bring back to recycle
would be long since marked 'recyc' by Networker. In other cases, some
savesets might still be recoverable, but the client(s) are long gone and
we don't care anyway.

On site tapes (those from ATL pool) are allowed to be recycled once
they're at least 6 months old. Anyway, I'm thinking to change the
retention policy to '6month' so it will match our real practiced policy.
It looks like I'll have to set this for every client, though, including
the server.

1. Can someone step me through the automated command line (nsradmin)
method to do this for all the clients? I'd like to avoid using the GUI
for each client -- too slow.

2. Should I reboot the server once completed?

3. Will this change be retroactive, or will it only start from this
point forward? For example, assuming no dependencies, will a volume or
saveset from say October 2003 that was previously flagged as
'recoverable' now be shown as 'recyclable' or does the countdown begin
now?

4. Guess I'll need to be more mindful NOT to leave tapes in the library
for more than 6 months; otherwise, NetWorker could load them and recycle
them if they're not write protected, assuming it ran out of available
tapes. This has never posed a serious risk prior since the policy was 1
year. There have been some tapes, though, that did sit for 5-6 months,
long after being full, and were not pulled out of library and
write-protected until after 6 months and times when we ran out of
available tapes over weekend and had to add more Monday morning. Would
not want to come in and discover NetWorker had recycled eligible tapes!

Any other concerns I should be thinking about here?

Thanks.

George

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