Guys,

To begin, a familiar story for many of you I'm sure - we have a customer
who has MSSQL databases, and wants TDP backups going back a month or so.
Easy, bread and butter stuff. Happy with this, they want their backups
from every Friday to be retained for 4 weeks, and from every 4th Friday
to last for 7 years. As the TDP stores the SQL backups in a backup
copygroup, we don't have that level of flexibility easily built in to
the tool to provide what is essentially more of an 'archive' type
request. 

The normal response at this point is to 'use different node names -
ABC123_WEEKLY or ABC123_MONTHLY', and this is indeed what I have done
frequently before. However, I can't help feeling this isn't quite
perfect, having to make our non TSM savvy client (on a remote site) faff
around with different node names and explain to them why TSM has to be
handled in this way. It's not that big a deal really, but I'm aiming for
simplification here.

Now, my question is whether anyone is achieving the fulfilment of such
requirements in another way, for example using 'set backups'. According
to the docs, 

        'set backups are intended to be used in unusual one-of-a-kind
situations [...] Because set backups are always uniquely named (like log
backups), they do not participate in expiration due to version limit
[...] The reason for using a set backup is if you do not want the backup
to be part of your normal expiration process.'

Sounds like a possibility - anyone using these already?

We've a similar requirement coming in for Informix backups - again, from
what I've seen of ONBAR so far, having out-of-sync weekly/monthly/yearly
backups could be a challenge when using the same node name. With Oracle
backups, we've managed to overcome this by customising the RMAN backup
piece tags, and expiring manually from RMAN based upon these to identify
logs, weekly and monthly backup pieces etc - works very smoothly indeed.

Your thoughts, especially on a Friday afternoon, are always much
appreciated :O)

Rgds,

David McClelland        
Tivoli Storage Manager Certified Consultant     
Operations Backup and Recovery Projects 
Shared Infrastructure Development       
Reuters 
85 Fleet Street 
London EC4P 4AJ 
        



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