This is just my two cents. I believe that the retention "level" and "date"
are two different things. While the "date" is determined at the time the
backup occurs, by adding the retention period to the current date, the
retention level is kept for other comparisons. So therefore, I think that,
once a backup has been written, its expiration "date" will remain constant
(unless you run bpexpdate with the recalculate option). Where as if you
change the periodicity of the retention level, you could end up with a tape
that has all the same retention levels, but mixed retention dates. So that
if you increase the retention period, there will be images on the tape that
will not expire when they should. And if you decrease the period, you will
have images expire before they should. Since I am not in development, I am
only basing this on my understanding of how NBU works. I could be completely
off base, and I hope someone from development steps and makes things
clearer.

"Of course this is just my opinion, I could be wrong." - Dennis Miller --
Ditto

Patrick Whelan 
Enterprise Consulting Services
[NBU (with extensions) and Storage Migrator for UNIX] 
pwhelan AT veritas DOT com



                -----Original Message-----
                From:   Michael Traves [mailto:mtraves.news AT home DOT com]
                Sent:   Tuesday, August 15, 2000 4:22 AM
                To:     Richard Harkins; 'Sam Don';
Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
                Subject:        Re: [Veritas-bu] Custom retention periods

                I might be mistaken, but my understanding is that the backup
expiration date
                is calculated at the time the backup is written to the tape
/ catalog, and
                is based upon the retention level set for that backup.
Therefore, if you
                were to change the retention level defaults at a later time,
you would only
                affect the expiration of backups past that point -- not the
expiration date
                of backups that already occurred.

                The comment about ending up with mixed expiration dates on a
tape due to a
                change in the retention level implies that you might end up
with some jobs
                with a 1 week expiration, and others with a 7 year
expiration because of a
                change in the retention level for a specific entry -- again,
the expiration
                date of a backup job doesn't change in this case either.


                Cheers,

                Mike


                ----- Original Message -----
                From: "Richard Harkins" <rharkins AT veritas DOT com>
                To: "'Sam Don'" <don_sam AT hotmail DOT com>;
<Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu>
                Sent: Monday, August 14, 2000 8:35 PM
                Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Custom retention periods


                > You need to be careful.  If you change the retention
period table, you
                will
                > change all of the retentions on backups currently on tape.
Let's say you
                > change the retention period table entry from 1 year to 3
years.  All of
                the
                > backups that were created with 1 year retentions will
become 3 years...
                >
                > Rick
                >
                > -----Original Message-----
                > From: Sam Don [mailto:don_sam AT hotmail DOT com]
                > Sent: Friday, August 11, 2000 1:10 PM
                > To: Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
                > Subject: [Veritas-bu] Custom retention periods
                >
                >
                > Hi,
                >
                > I need to set the retention period on my tapes to three
years. Anyone know
                > how?
                >
                > Thanks,
                > SD
                >
                >
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