TDP Domino backups for long retention

[kwesi]

Hi,

maybe somebody can help me with tdp 4 domino in my special case.

my company wants to keep regular data forever i solved this policy with generating backupsets regularly and offsiting them.

now i want to backup our Domino servers with TDP and i read that it isnt possible to create backupsets for long time retention...

we do not use archive logging.

i would need a policy domain with 30 versions, and one "full"backup per month offsited.

how can i solve the issue with the "monthly full backups"?

did somebody have the same policy (long retention) and a different solutioN?


thx in advance

greez

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

I'm not sure why your company would want keep a single day once a month forever. That doesn't make sense. They understand that something created on the 1st and removed on the 20th wont be there right? Very odd.

But anyway... we have created a managment class specificly for mail (notes/exchange) this management class is bound to the TDP via opt file. We are using a separate node to backup the TDP. You could do the same thing by simply adding another node that is associated to a monthly schedule and the nolimit mgmt class.

Again this wouldn't keep everything forever. It would only keep a picture of that TDP for that individual day for that month.

The crappy thing about going from backupset to archive/backup is the database growth for each nolimit copy. The only other option would be to use a snapshot image backup selecting only the drive containing the notes database. You really don't need the TDP for notes. The image could be compressed and sent directly to tape while showing up as a single entry in the TSM database.

 

[DanGiles]

*shuffle* *shuffle* *clomp* *clomp*
(That's me climbing up on my soap box :tongue: )

So, ask management why they need to do this. Compliance? Litigation? What happens if some lawer wants "all e-mails from joe blow to jane doe between Mar '08 and Aug '08. Whatcha going to do then? And if you upgraded Exchange to a new version, where, of course, they've redesigned their database?!? Even if they don't, how are you going to search a retrieve through this massive amount of data? most of which is duplicated over and over and over and over and... again.

 

[kwesi]

sorry for continuing here but is it possible to restore nsf databases (backupped via tdp domino) to another server where no notes/domino is running? a simple file restore of tdp domino data to another tsm node without domino server running?



is this only possible with the usual b/a client? i saw that there is a plugin for b/a client for nsf if tdp domino is installed but i cannot get a file list expanded. always rejectet error couse of a authentication error (but no password prompt and authentication data should work)

and what if the backupped domino node is offline and i want to restore nsf's?


in the meantime thought about the retention problem:
create 3 policies:
daily (incr) - retention 7 versions/7 days
weekly (selective) - retention 4 version/30 days
monthly (selective) - retention 12 versions/365 days

if data grows too much i could do
scripted restore of notes db's to a fileshare on a node
backup the restored db's with normal filebackup
generate backupset of the node with the data

confusing and complicated (e.g. i have to set up 3 opt files... and create 3 nodes in tsm... and that for several servers ;D) but it should work or?


thx a lot gurus

 

[el.b00ty]

My company wanted to do the same thing... basically, around last October, they said "keep all e-mail forever". I'm no TSM guru, but I am our primary admin... however, the mail backups are maintained by our Domino admin.

Anyway, what he ended up doing is setting everything to 9999 in the standard (default) management class of our Domino domain. He does incremental backups every night and a full every weekend.

At the time, we told our management that this was a bad idea because:

a) It would probably eat through our storage in less than a year because we're storing the same data over and over.
b) Wouldn't truly capture all mail anyway, since anything received and deleted in the same day between nightly backups would be gone.
c) Would be pointless for legal purposes because of the logistics of restoring the mail data and sifting through it.

... of course, they did it anyway...

So, fast forward to present day, and TSM is in shambles. We finally convinced them that a mail archving/eDiscovery solution was needed, but even with the project now approved it won't be in production for 4-6 weeks. So I reduced all the above '9999' settings to 180 days in an effort to at least clear enough space for TSM to operate again. It's a mess.

As I said, I'm no guru... but from personal experience I can tell you that, if at all possible, do everything you can to avoid trying to use TSM alone for this task. It's not designed for it...

 

[Jeff_Jeske]

^ Agreed for mail archiving we are using EMC Centera. We archive our mailboxes to the Centera as well. It has been working very well.

We bind our mail - notes/exchange - to a 10 version 10 day retention period.

 

[sebastian]

"...sorry for continuing here but is it possible to restore nsf databases (backupped via tdp domino) to another server ..."

Absolutely.
We are in the same situation. Mgmt decided to "keep everything forerver" . I told them we'll need a journaling system to catch every transaction, but that was of course "too expensive"
Anyway. We have TDP for Lotus Notes and no limit on email DB so far. some DB's are 25 GB.

As the Backupset is not supported for the TDP API I did an Export node in the past. But this started to be a vast amount of TByte. So I figured why not restoring to an attached storage ( Full BA is 1.2 TByte currently) as we then have a flat file of each DB. I have connected a private GBit LAN between Notes server and TSM Server. After that I am starting an archive (with another node name) on the command line with the option -deletefiles.
It is not the best solution I bet, but it works good so far. B.t.W.
=> When TSM archives, it there a copy simultaneously made into the copy pool ?? <=

I totally agree that this will keep copies and copies of 99.9% of each DB content and a better solution is the email journaling/archiving and dedupe.

I would like to discuss some more Alternatives:
1. a user might have one Db e.g. user_arch.nsf with all his archived emails and one current version to minimize size.

2. Adding a TSM Node onto that server e.g. Server_arch and scheduling this into a longterm mgmt class with ( uups, ythis is what you just described )

3. There is a DBCOPY feature for exchange, this is maybe also valid for Lotus Notes ?
found here
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21287406

4. We are using a Lotus Notes Cluster and I thought of bringing one of the Notes Server down and do a flat file backup. This may be finished in 3 h with Gigabit.