Help Removing Old Data from Archived TSM

[buster99]

Hello, I'm looking for advice for dealing with an issue I'm having reclaiming tapes from our archived TSM instance. We have a TSM instance that we moved off of in June, 2012 when we upgraded to V6.3. I know that there are tape volumes that I should be able to reclaim from this instance with our automated reclamation processes but I'm thinking that our retention/expiration settings may be causing tapes to hold data longer than we need it to. Our current retention policy for production data is 7 years and even though the entire system will be outdated in less than a year, I would like to get a bulk tape reclamation going before then, if possible.


Policy Policy Mgmt Copy Versions Versions Retain Retain
Domain Set Class Group Data Data Extra Only
Name Name Name Name Exists Deleted Versions Version
--------- --------- --------- --------- -------- -------- -------- -------


WINDOWS ACTIVE 3_YEAR_TAPE STANDARD 1,100 1,100 1,100 1,100


WINDOWS ACTIVE 7_YEAR_TAPE STANDARD 2,600 2,600 2,600 2,600


With these settings and the need to retain data for 3 or 7 years, are we actually retaining data longer than expected ?

I have quite a few tape volumes with very little data on them that have not been written to in over 7 years. I'm hoping to get TSM to cleanly remove the data and reclaim these tapes.

Any advice would be appreciated. Please let me know if any more detail is needed. TSM V5.5.5.2

Thank you

 

[LED888]

If the data was "backed up" just reduce the retention settings.
I would reduce the retention settings in steps until you reach your target.
ie: From 7 years reduce to 6.5years, wait a few days. Then reduce to 6 years, wait a few days.
If you reduce the retention from 7 years to something like 1 year. If there are lots of data, expiration and reclamation are going to be very busy.

NOTE: When changing the retention, update the inactive policy set and then issue the activate policy set so that the new changes will be push to the active policy set.


Good Luck,
Sias