Performing Archive rather than Backup makes more sense for this purpose, as it's intended for such exceptional put-away needs. Consider defining a separate management class and storage pool, to best identify such deeds. If you must go with Backup, I'd proceed as below...
In most cases, a tape sent away in this manner calls for a retention period that is different than the usual, in that it's pointless to have a tape nicely secured somewhere and yet have the files on it logically expire. I would thus set up a separate management class and backup copy group for this purpose, making the management class name descriptive. I'd also define a separate storage pool for it, with a MAXSCRatch value of 0, and define an empty tape into it. This will allow you to choose a tape and assure that it will contain only the desired data. Then set up a temporary Include for that management class, perform the special backup, and checkout the tape, marking it Offsite (to prevent inadvertent mount attempts from waiting on it). Remove the temporary Include. Separate definitions allow you to readily identify such separated data, when you have to look back some months or years in the future. Richard Sims
