confused about some aspects of DRM

[spiffy]

i am trying to get DRM to work at an offsite location that has TSM installed and i am confused about some aspects of it. i have read through the admin guide, and implemetation guide, i am just not finding some answers.

i have no problem with the sending the tapes offsite, following the steps there is pretty straight forward, it is the bringing them back onsite and how DRM determines what tapes go in vault retrieve status.

does it use the Retention period of the policy i have set up, which is 30 days, or does it use the SET DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS? So i send off my copypool tapes and my DBBackup tape. i have the DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS set to 5 days. does DRM see that number and vault retrieve everything after the 5 days is up, or just the database backup tapes?

i also have del volhist type=dbb todate=today-5, i have read some posts here that state i do not need this with DRM in use. i am confused a bit.

Also, when it comes time to checkin, i have more tapes than my library has capacity, shouldnt matter where i put them, when they are checked out, they lose their slot assignement. What is everyone else doing for put tapes back in. i have seen that i can just use the checkin command, or some move drm command i dont quite understand yet...

thanks in advance

 

[rmazzon]

Spiffy,

Tapes go to vaultretrieve after they go pending and then meet their storage pool reuse delay, either through the data expiring or through the reclamation process where replacement copypool tapes are created. The DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS setting only applies to DBB tapes. And disable your del volhist.

Your management class/copygroup settings dictate the retention of your data.

Returning tapes do not need to be in the library to be made scratch. You can issue the "MOVE DRM * WHERESTATE=COURIERR TOSTATE=ONSITER" at any time and you can store those tapes outside the library.

 

[moon-buddy]

First of all, when you use DRM, you should NOT use 'del volhist'. I have stressed time and time again in my previous posts.

The DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS is the parameter that TSM looks at for keeping X number of days DB backups. This means that if you have set DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS to 8 and you backup the DB FULL twice a day, you end up with 16 DB tapes. The value of DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS should match the RESUSE parameter of the offiste tape storage (DR tapes). Thie value of DRMDBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS should also match the number of DR PLANS generated per DB backup days.

Now the DR scenario:

At DR, if your Manager says that we need to recover from July 27, what you do is:

1. Take your DR plan as of July 27
2. Expand the PLAN; this retrieves the volhist, devconfig and dsmserv.opt files as well (you need to place these files at properly locations)
3. Get the DB tape listed for July 27
4. Get the list of DR tapes from offsite for July 27
5. Recover TSM via the DB tape for July 27
6. Load the DR tapes into the library; I just open the door and slam the tapes in the slots
7. Checkin the tapes with search=yes
8. Run the recovery script

Thats it!

Works everytime for me.

 

[spiffy]

ok, i turfed the del volhist command out of my daily scripts, set the reusedelay on the copypool to match the drmdbbackupexpiredays, dr plans match too.

I am gonna play around now with some tapes that are in vault retrieve status and are onsite now, just not in the library and see how it goes.

thanks all!

 

[spiffy]

MoonBuddy, quick question

in you steps here:

6. Load the DR tapes into the library; I just open the door and slam the tapes in the slots
7. Checkin the tapes with search=yes

do you use the move drm command or just the regular checkin command?

 

[moon-buddy]

I don't use any move command as the library and TSM environment at is not the same one as the Production environment. Move DRM command is not applicable here.

The DR site is 'new' and all you need is checkin those tapes.