Some considerations for long-term archive:

- Much of today's data, as it is used from day to day, exists in some
product-specific format. If you were to retrieve that data, say, 10 years
from now, would you have software capable of reading that data?

- Even if you archive the software, will operating systems 10 years from
now be able to run that software?

- Even if you archive the operating system installation files, will the
hardware 10 years from now be able to install and run that operating
system?

- There is a good case to consider carefully what gets archived and how
you archive it.For instance, maybe for database data, it would make sense
to export that data to some common format, such as tab- or comma-delimited
records, which is very likely to be importable by most software. Likewise,
for image data, consider a format that is common today and likely to be
common tomorrow.

- 10 years from now, the people that need to retrieve the archived data
will probably not be the same people who originally archived the data.
Will your successors know what that data is? Will they know how to get to
it? ("Gee, we need to get at the accounts payable database from 10 years
ago... under which node is it archived?") Will they know how to
reconstruct it, and how to use it?

I am by no means an expert in this area, but these are some things to
consider carefully for long-term archives. Note that most of these issues
are not directly related to TSM, but apply regardless of which data
storage tool you use.

Regards,

Andy

Andy Raibeck
IBM Software Group
Tivoli Storage Manager Client Development
Internal Notes e-mail: Andrew Raibeck/Tucson/IBM@IBMUS
Internet e-mail: storman AT us.ibm DOT com

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