Planning issues

[TBart]

We are getting through the testing phases of our implementation of TSM. Now my boss comes to me and wants the backup to run as follows:



Old-fashioned Full Backups daily, retain 1 version for 30 days, retain only version for 30 days.



Copy to tape daily and taken offsite so that if someone needs a file from a last Tuesday I would go to the Tuesday tape and restore from the tape. I know this totally defeats the purpose of TSM, because most files would not be on the disk storage pool, but rather on the tapes. However, is it possible to set this type of strategy up? Backup or Archive? Can I force a full backup every day from the TSM Server as a scheduled process?



All input is greatly appreciated as I need all arguments for and against this type of policy. (Basically a Veritas-style backup process)

 

[heada]

I had a similar problem with my ERP and CRM applications (for DR reasons) For our ERP (a 1.8 TB SAP) we perform archives direct to tape. This works well. For our CRM, we perfrom backups. I had to set the backup group to be copymode:absolute and versionsexist:35 (30 in your case) I still backup CRM to disk and then copy to tape (followed by a migrate from disk to tape) Since I have a 3494, all data is both onsite and offsite and available for quick restores.



Hope this helps



-Aaron

 

[rcard]

Perhaps someone should have explained to your boss the way TSM works BEFORE you bought it! As you clearly know, TSM works on a once-only full backup, incrementals thereafter basis, (much better than frequent full backups across the network), and uses a version-retention policy, NOT time-retention. If your boss is insistent with his requirements you've got real efficiency problems and you've bought the wrong product!

I suppose you could set TSM up to keep 30 versions, but that would obviously be very inefficient and wasteful of storage resource. Good Luck!