Retaining data on a primary pool differently than a secondary (copy) pool

[D-Ray]

Do any of you know anyway to backup data to a primary storage pool, retain incrementals for 30 days.. then do a daily copy of the same data to a physical tape via copy pool or some other mechanism and have it retained to never expire.. I was hoping of maybe something like setting up a primary pool and then a secondary pool that would work for this or something down that avenue. I looked at some of the storage pool settings around migration delay (MIGDelay) to store data for 30 days on an active pool then migrate in an in-active pool but that doesn’t address the need for daily tapes to be cut for off-site with the (Never Expire) retention policy....Any help would be greatly appreciated..

 

[Eldoraan]

Retention is applied to the data, not the storage pool it's in. So no way to do what you're looking at.

 

[D-Ray]

Thanks Eldoraan, I see you are in Charlotte.. I am as well. So are you aware of any other function I might be able to use to accomplish something like this? I want to stay away from the reuse delay stuff due to having to restore an associated TSM database to recover data..

 

[DanGiles]

And what would one do with all these tapes? Search for some of my other threads on my rantings on this subject

And that's not how active storage pools work: there are no "next pools".

If you insist on keeping non-indexed, non-searchable, non-structured data forever, use archives.

 

[Eldoraan]

You could also perform a periodic BackupSet for all/selected nodes. That would take snapshot of all the active data on that day and write out to seperate tapes. Only issue with them is management of them. If you generate a lot of them, it can be a pain to track since they're sort of external objects to TSM. If you expire the definition in TSM, the BackupSet is still usable and can be reimported back into TSM - but you'll need to keep tabs on it outside of TSM.

 

[heada]

Archive. They're time based and not version based and they're tracked/managed just like backups. Do you month-end archives and keep them for 1 year, year-end archives and keep them for 7 years (seems that is the most common request)

-Aaron

 

[D-Ray]

Archives are a good common fit but the need is to perform incrementals on the primary storage (VTL) with a 30 day retention policy and cut tape copies (daily) for off-site storage that will never expire.. This has to be done every day on the active storage pool..

 

[D-Ray]

Eldoraan, when you say keep tabs, are you saying that I cannot simply initiate a restore from TSM and it know where the data resides on its tape volume? Sorry to show some ignorance here

 

[Eldoraan]

BackupSets are kind of weird. They're seperate from the normal storage heirarchy. Mostly used if you have to send data to 3rd party. If that 3rd party doesn't use TSM, but has same type of tape drive available. They can direct attach that tape drive to a host and with just the TSM client restore the data from the BackupSet tape(s). Read up on them, they get misunderstood a lot.

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

What does your hardware inventory look like? Do you have one VTL and two tape libraries? It seems odd that you would only have one copy of your nolimit data stored offsite. Most companies want two identical copies with the same retention stored in two different places.

How many requested restores are for data 15 day old or older? I ask this because I would think that most restores would be fore recently changed data.

How much changing data are you backing up daily? Do you really need to use the CDL for the initial pool or could you get away with a diskpool?

If you need to keep everything forever you can't really do archives or backupsets as those would capture a full (selective) copy each day instead of only what has changed each day. A full every day would consume crazy amounts of space.

 

[D-Ray]

I agree with the first part Jeff, most customers do want identical data on two sites however, we can get away with storing the forever data off-site and the 30 days locally in the VTL. I can use a storage pool for my primary landing zone then migrate to VTL for the 30 days if you have ideas around that.. Restores are requested from all sorts of dates.. no good average there. Average daily incrementals are roughly 23Tb per night

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

You must have one whooping VTL!

Do you really need to keep everything forever or like Eldoraan stated could you get away with a periodic full?

 

[D-Ray]

Actually multiple VTL's.. and yep.. all copies stored off-site must be retained to never expire.. I really do thank you guys for responding.. I am new on this site.. I have reviewed it for years but never subscribed..

 

[heada]

Use normal DRM and set the DBBACKUPEXPIREDAYS to something really big (9999days is 27 years) Send off your normal incremental backups and TSM DB Backups. If you were to ever need to restore from the "forever-vault", restore the TSM DB from that day and then the tapes magically unexpire. Since the tapes are never used again, it is all good. (tapes can be physical tapes or virtual tapes in a VTL as long as the VTL never tries to reuse a tape)

I am very interested in the reasoning behind this. I know of no law that would require it and so that means it must be business reasons. Don't know of any business reason that could justify all the expense both in media and management of that media.

-Aaron

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

You might be able to deploy and HSM solution for this.