Directories Retention and Policy Domains

[aposteraro]

Our TSM installation is large (about 400 clients ) and with very different retention periods ,varing from one week .... to ten years.

Most nodes have different retention periods related to different Objects to be backed-up.

For example one node has 2 objects , one with retention 1 week and the other 10 years....



The retention of directories , without specifying DIRMC in DSM.OPT of the client , automatically takes the value of the highest “Retention Only Version” which is in our case 10 years : the conseguence is that the directory of the object with retention 1 week is mantained for 10 years ( we can’t use the DIRMC statement in the OPT because it’s not possible specialize that statement for single Object) and the number of entries retained in the database is growing in a very critical manner.



Any suggestions is very appreciate.



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[AndyRH]

Our theory of operation is very different, but our goal seems to be similar.

We use TSM backups for recovery of the system only. If there is an object that needs retained for longer than the backup will keep it we run an archive job to grab the object.

Further, if an object is going to sit on a server for 5 of it's 10 year life then it will be archived when it is removed from the server, after all, we can recover the server.

We have data that is archived once a month. What we do is move it to a specific place and an archive job comes through and copies it to tape and removes the copy from disk.

Also, we do not consider an object ready for archiving unless it is going to be changed or is no longer needed on-line. If you archive an object, but leave it on the server you end up with 5 copies. (disk, Backup primary, Backup Copy, Archive Primary, Archive Copy)

We have archives for 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 27 years.

While this does not answer your question, it may provide a solution.



Andy