Richard, You're right, of course, but in this case Bill was trying to balance risk of corrupted primary tapes vs. shortage of media. I sometimes find myself in the same situation. My recommendation was relative to that balance point. If you have the luxury of lots of tapes and library capacity, you can of course set the reuse delay for as long as you'd like. You're right about tape. I have thanked IBM several times in this forum for the idea of the copypool. It has saved us on at least three different occasions. My wife's company uses a different backup product and local drives that write one copy of each backup. She longs for TSM's functionality.
Thanks. Tab Trepagnier TSM Administrator Laitram, L.L.C. Richard Sims <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/10/2004 06:49 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: Re: Reclamation data loss scenario >You really only need to set the reuse delay long enough to ensure that you >have at least one good DB backup before reusing the volume. ... That reminds me of the scene in The Court Jester where a knight pushes Danny Kaye out of the spot where lightning is about to strike. :-)) Our reality is that we don't know where lightning is about to strike. You don't know that a tape and its contained data are actually good until you really need it. That's why we increase the odds by making copy storage pool tapes, and why one really needs to keep multiple generations of DB backup tapes and a Reusedelay long enough to cover all of them. Tape is tape, operators are operators, and the random elements of this universe jump out of dark recesses to surprise and humble us when we believe we've thought of everything. Be cautious, and increase your odds. Richard Sims