On Wed, 5 Feb 2003 11:27:40 -0500, Charles Gagnon <charlesg AT UNIXREALM DOT 
COM>
wrote:

>We want/need to have different retention/browsing times depending on
>the backup schedule.
This is actually quite a common requirement, and one that NetWorker does not
handle particularly well.

> The only way we have found to do this is:
>
>MachineA
>    Group: DailyBackups
>    Pool: DailyBackups
>    Schedule: Incremental Daily, skip friday & weekends
>
>MachineA
>    Group: WeeklyBackups
>    Pool: WeeklyBackups
>    Schedule: Full on friday, skip otherwise
>
>Having two pools makes sense since the data in one pool will expire
>faster than the data in another. So don't want to mix them on the
>same medias.

This is one of the best reasons there is for creating multiple pools. Some
users (particularly novices) can get a bit carried away with creating pools
and later (when it's too late) discover that it wasn't such a good idea
after all. This is the right time for doing multiple pools.

>
>But already, listing the same machine twice is not really nice (but
>there is not way around that is there?), but two have two groups on
>top of that just complicates things.

Two (or even three or more) client definitions for the same client is
strictly the right way to accomplish this. But it's horrible and unwieldy,
especially if you have a couple of hundred clients. Putting the same client
in two or more groups helps, and allows you to split the data into different
pools as well as overriding the client schedule with the group schedule.
Unfortunately there is a little piece missing from the jigsaw (ARE YOU
LISTENING LEGATO????). What is required is a way to override the retention
(and browse) on the group in the same way as we can the schedule. This seems
like such an obvious enhancement and it would be sooooo convenient.

The only way I know to work round this is to override the retention and/or
browse on a per pool basis AFTER the backup. The nsrmm command allows you to
modify the browse and/or retention on a per save set basis. It is quite a
simple script to update the browse/retention of all save sets in a pool to
the correct period after the savetime. I have such a script if required. It
probably only needs running about once a week.

I hope this helps.

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