Joni Does the requirement explicitly say an archive? or just that there is to be a point in time backup once a month that is kept for 7 years?
The problem with archives is that you must explicitly specify what is to be backed up and that is not always easy to know. One place I worked I kept a record of the filesystems on each node, and once a month compared last month and current filesystems and programmatically re-generated the archive commands. Archives are also not good from an include-exclude point of view as you have to explicitly code an include.archive or exclude.archive whenever you add a backup rule, and also you *may* want to exclude some files eg databases from backup but not from archive most of the time, but not during your monthly archives. The better solution to most of this is a second TSM Server which does a monthly incremental backup. Less data backed up, less data stored, less DB space used :) more complexity on the client, more complexity in the server setup and node maintenance :( If you also have the requirement that one backup a year be kept indefinitely ( in my case this was government healthcare and some records needed to be kept for the life of the patient + 20 years, so the simple-minded approach was - keep everything) there may even be a case for a yearly incremental setup as well, although these days a backupset will probably do the job as effectively. Finally, one idea that I toyed with but never tried was a periodic export backupactive server to server. with the fromdate/fromtime option. The mgmtclasses on the receiver would have to have the same names as the sender, but with different retentions. Hope this Helps Steve Steven Harris TSM Admin Sydney, Australia Joni Moyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED] ARK.COM> To Sent by: "ADSM: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Dist Stor cc Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject .EDU> [ADSM-L] Scheduling a full archive of data once/month 23/10/2007 12:49 AM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] .EDU> Hello everyone, I have just received the task of scheduling an archive of all data from several windows servers the first Saturday of every month for 7 years. What is the best method of accomplishing this? I would like to do this from the TSM server which is an AIX 5.3 TSM 5.3.5.2 server. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! ******************************** Joni Moyer Highmark Storage Systems, Storage Mngt Analyst III Phone Number: (717)302-9966 Fax: (717) 302-9826 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ********************************