>> What do you think about using two TSM instance on the same backup server. >> One for every day short term retention and an other one for the long term >> once a month.
I have a customer who does that, because they were bought by a non-US parent company that REQUIREs them to keep a monthly backup forever. It works. -One instance does incrementals with max 60 day retention. -The 2nd instance does an incremental, not a full, on the last weekend of every month. Making the monthly an incremental is the trick to keeping the DB and the backup store a (sort of) reasonable size. With the monthly incremental, you can still restore any client to the point in time, without actually having to back up all that data again. I didn't architect that solution, and my hat is off to the person who did; it meets the requirements imposed on the organization. I still don't recommend it. The truly best solution would be to set up the correct type of archiving software (not TSM archiving), so that the necessary email and documents are saved for eons in a way that is not dependent on the original hostname, not dependent on the original media, and properly indexed and searchable (and not limited to the file name for searches). Trouble is, that takes commitment by the company (and a lot of work and expense up front) to actually implement good records management practices. Most companies won't do that work in the short term, even though they would be better off in the long term.
