Administrator's Guide

The Parts of a Policy

Policy administrators use ADSM policy to specify how files are backed up, archived, migrated from client node storage, and managed in ADSM storage. Figure 37 shows the parts of a policy and the relationships among the parts.

Figure 37. ADSM Policy

Backup copy group

Controls how ADSM performs backup processing of files associated with the management class. A backup copy group determines the following:

• If a file is backed up (even if it has not changed since the last backup)
• How many days must elapse before a file can be backed up again
• How to handle files that are in use during backup
• Where the server stores backup versions of files and directories
• How many backup versions the server keeps of files and directories
• How long the server keeps backup versions of files and directories

Archive copy group

Controls how ADSM performs archive processing of files associated with the management class. An archive copy group determines the following:

• How to handle files that are in use during archive
• Where the server stores archived copies of files
• How long the server keeps archived copies of files

Management class

Associates backup and archive groups with files and specifies if and how client node files are migrated to storage pools. A management class can contain one backup copy group, one archive copy group, both a backup and archive copy group, or no copy groups. Users can bind (that is, associate) their files to a management class through the include-exclude list.

See "More on Management Classes" for details.

Policy set

Specifies the management classes that are available to groups of users. Policy sets contain one or more management classes: a default management class and any number of additional management classes.

Policy domain

Lets an administrator group client nodes by the policies that govern their files and by the administrators who manage their policies. A policy domain contains one or more policy sets, but only one policy set (named ACTIVE) can be active at a time. ADSM uses the active policy set to manage files for client nodes assigned to a policy domain.

You can use policy domains to:

• Group client nodes with similar file management requirements
• Provide different default policies for different groups of clients
• Direct files from different groups of clients to different storage hierarchies based on need (different file destinations with different storage characteristics)
• Restrict the number of management classes to which clients have access