As you are seeing, dealing with the metadata for so many files takes an excessive amount of time. The best solution is to forego TSM (or any other file level backup product) and use replicating storage, which does block level backups. Snapshots on the storage device will allow you to implement retention policy. If you must backup the files to TSM, you should check out image backups. Orville L. Lantto
________________________________ From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager on behalf of Herrmann, Boris Sent: Tue 7/3/2007 08:28 To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: [ADSM-L] Backup/Archive our Document Management System Hi all, I'm searching for a good idea how to backup up or archive our important Document Management System (AIX JFS2). Today we have backed up about 190 Million Files. The Filestructure is the following: There are Filesystems (40 GB) for every mandant on this system: <mandant-a>/00001 <mandant-b>/00001 ... <mandant-k>/00001 In every Filesystem we have circa 1 Million Files. When a "mandant"-Filesystem ist full the following happens: -The Filesystem was remouted to the state READONLY -A new empty Filesystem (40 GB) is created for this mandant with an increased 5-digit number . New documents are now going to this filesystem. What is the best way to backup / archive this system? Some thoughts: Our backup runs today over 40 hours, TSM DB is growing and growing, and with backup we've had the problem, that after a crash one Filesystem was corrupted and after fsck some files/blocks (sorry I'm not a AIX Admin) are going to the directory "lost+found". But what happens with the "corrupted" files. I think they will be backed up again and the "good" backed up Files on TSM expire? If so, this would be a disaster for our company. Any hints / suggentions on this issue are appreciate. Boris