I suspect though that nbu will have "issues" when it comes to recycling media.
Since you say that you've created _a_ special volume pool, you can bet that it
may be likely that you are writing images to the same tape that, once you've
executed the bpexpdate command, effectively have different retention periods.
You could end up with a tape that has images on it in 2 years and 7 years.  3
years from now, your 2 year retention images will have expired, but I doubt you
will be able to reclaim that space on the tape until ALL images have expired.

You might consider:

1. making all "weird retention" periods set to the maximum retention period (7
years?) - or
2. creating special volume pools for each non-standard retention period with the
intent that you will manually "bpexpdate" at the end of a backup.  The idea is
to get all images on a tape to expire around the same time frame...

As I understand how NBU works, once a tape is marked FULL, it is not re-written
to until ALL images on the tape have expired.  Am I flawed in my understanding?

-jason

Brian Blake wrote:

> All,
>
> Actually, with NBU 3.1.1 and above, you have the ability to assign a
> particular retention "period" to a retention "level". There are a total of
> 10 different retention levels (0 through 9). So, just change the default
> retention PERIODS to accomodate your needs. This change is done on the
> master server, Global Configuration screen (there will be a radio button
> where you click on retention periods).
>
> Regards,
>
> Brian
>
> Brian Blake
> Enterprise Consulting Services
> VERITAS Software
> brian.blake AT veritas DOT com
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vandevegt, James Matthew (Jim) [SMTP:vandevegt AT lucent DOT com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 3:58 PM
> > To:   'veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu'
> > Cc:   'Brian_Drager AT vanguard DOT com'
> > Subject:      RE: [Veritas-bu] Expiration Dates
> >
> > There's nothing wrong with your procedure that I can see.  The "retention
> > levels" are only used to assign the expiration date at the time the image
> > is
> > made.  After that the expiration time is stored as an attribute of the
> > image.  You can change it at will using bpexpdate.
> >
> > --Jim
> >
> > > ----------
> > > From:       Brian_Drager AT vanguard DOT com[SMTP:Brian_Drager AT 
> > > vanguard DOT com]
> > >
> > > Does anybody know if this will cause a problem. We get several different
> > > request
> > > to backup files/directories and they need to be retained for 2 yrs, 3yrs
> > > 7yrs
> > > etc. Basically Veritas NetBackup does not offer enough different
> > retention
> > > levels for us. This is what I been doing and not sure if it will cause
> > any
> > > problems. We set up a specal class and a volume pool to do this. The
> > > retention
> > > is set to infinity. Once the backup is completed I look up the backup id
> > > and
> > > then use bpexpdate to change the expiration date from infinity to what
> > > ever date
> > > I want that image to expire. Even know the class is set for infinity
> > will
> > > the
> > > image still expire from these tapes that were setup in the special pool?
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> > http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
> _______________________________________________
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