Hey, Josh.

You could write a Perl script (or pick a language) that manages these
canisters.  It can track which volumes are in each canister, check all their
%util and %recl and generate a canister %util/%recl.  Then you can have your
script issue delete vols or move datas when a canister is sufficiently
empty.  Of course, if you do this, you won't be able to use the stgpool's
pct_reclaim to do reclamation, but that's OK because your script mimics the
reclamation.  It would be like an offsitepool with superlarge tapes, so
_hopefully_ you'll get volume usage similar to what you're seeing now.  It
should also be pretty simple to write.

Personally, I don't like either the brand new copypool or the
import/export/backupset options.  They seem like they'll add too much drive
utilization.

Alex Paschal
Storage Administrator
Freightliner, LLC
(503) 745-6850 phone/vmail


-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Bassi [mailto:jbassi AT IHWY DOT COM]
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 1:21 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Offsite Vaulting with Locked Canisters


All,

I am looking for feedback on using locked canisters for offsite
vaulting.  I have setup DRM for several accounts who used open
containers and I have setup poor man's tape rotation without DRM with
open canisters, but I have never implemented a locked canister solution.

The problem as I see it is that not all the data on the tapes will
expire at the same time.  So what will happen is that some of the tapes
in the canister are available for reclamation and then return to the
data center, but other tapes will not be available at the same time,
this will cause the tapes in the canister to be out of sync.

I have thought of 2 ways to potentially deal with this problem:

1) Every week we can create a brand new copy storage pool and backup the
primary pools to the offsite pool.  After 3 weeks all the data in the
pool can be deleted and the tapes brought back onsite.  This is not
utilizing TSM's incremental backup storage pool feature, but would
guarantee that a complete set of data was taken offsite each week.

2) Use either import/export or generate backupset to create fresh tapes
every week.

--
Joshua S. Bassi
IBM Certified - AIX 4/5L, SAN, Shark
Tivoli Certified Consultant - ADSM/TSM
eServer Systems Expert -pSeries HACMP
AIX, HACMP, Storage, TSM Consultant
Cell (831) 595-3962
jbassi AT ihwy DOT com