ADSM is not your father's backup product!   :-)

Because of it's design, and the use of the Data Base, it is not a requirement
to do full backups.  This is supported by the lack of any "easy" way to do a
full backup - you can't just click on "full" and let 'er rip.  The design lets
you always get to the latest copy of the files, thus allowing ADSM to go
directly to the files that made up your disk the last time it was backed up.
Additionally, if you do a full restore, you don't have to do the full volume
and then apply the incrementals or differentials.  Each file is only handled
once.  They are processed in tape order to eliminate back spacing on the tape.
 All of this minimizes network traffic, which in my shop is the critical
resource.

The only argument that I have heard that begins to make sense for full backups
is that a "full" backup allows for the smallest number of tapes to manage.
Perhaps this is true, but I rely on my tape automation system to worry about
that.  ADSM can use a process called collocation to keep files from a user
together on a minimum set of tapes that generally only "belong" to him, so
this is not a strong argument, in my opinion.

Because of this design, we keep things simple here - we just set up a single
policy domain for an area, and tell people to stick ADSM in their Start Up
folders and forget about it - let the scheduler handle the backups for them.
Behind the scenes, the daily incrementals keep popping off without a problem.

As they said in Star Trek 5 "Let go of your pain....."

Jerry Lawson
jlawson AT itthartford DOT com
________________________Forward Header________________________
Author: INTERNET.OWNERAD
Subject: Q's about weekly, monthly, yearly backups.
09-03-96 02:28 PM

[This is a question from someone who has no formal ADSM training but has
tried to read the ADSM docs on the subject, so it's a pretty newbie question.]

I am trying to understand how the traditional weekly, monthly, and yearly
backup schedules I'm used to translate into ADSM. By traditional, I mean the
following schedule:

Daily incremental backups are made for a machine.
Each week, a full backup is made and kept for 4 weeks.
The first weekly backup is also considered a monthly backup and is kept for
12 months.
The first monthly backup is also considered a yearly backup and is kept for
7 years.

This works fine in the one file system->one set of tapes->one backup mode,
but ADSM complicates things mightily.

I am trying to backup multiple systems each on a different day (for the
weekly) to a single stgpool (or active policy set -- I'm still a little hazy
 on the nomenclature) and then backing that stgpool up to a copy stgpool for
off site storage. I want the off site tapes to be stored for a set period of
time (4 weeks, 12 months, or 7 years) and then be returned and immediately
re-used.

So my questions are do I need to use different management groups (policy
set?) with different retentions for the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly
backups? Or do I need a separate copy stgpool for each type?

If the above did not make it clear, I am confused. Any help would be
appreciated.

Thanks for your time,
Owen Crow