Concurrent backups, Auto-terminate stalled backups, Backup retention policy – Storix Software SBAdmin TSM Edition Users Guide User Manual
Page 96: Set in t, Backup retention policies

the CPU could run slower. In this case, you might consider a setting of 7 to give priority to the backup
without bringing all other applications to a halt.
Setting this option to any value other than 5 will apply to all backup
jobs unless you change the
within the job
settings.
Concurrent Backups
SBAdmin has no control over where the backup data is actually stored on the TSM server. Therefore, all
backups to the TSM server may be run concurrently, even if they are writing to the same tape library or disk
drives. This may pose a problem on the server for a number of reasons:
1. This may cause degraded I/O performance on the server, affecting other applications.
2. A single large backup to a server’s disk could cause many smaller backups to take much longer since
they must share the same I/O.
3. TSM may simultaneously write multiple backups to the same tape (interspersing the backup data), but
all of the simultaneous backups will be limited by the speed of that single tape drive.
It would make more sense in any case to limit the number of concurrent backups to a manageable number.
To limit the number of disk backups which may be written concurrently to the same server, select
File
!Preferences!General Preferences
, and enter a number in
the Limit concurrent backups to the
TSM Server to: field.
By leaving this field blank, there will be no limit to the number of concurrent backups.
Auto-Terminate Stalled Backups
You may specify the number of minutes to wait before considering a backup as stalled and have the backup
job automatically killed. This preference does not apply to backups written to tape devices because the
timeout could be related to waiting for a new tape when reaching end of media. The default is to wait
forever and not automatically kill the backup job.
A backup is considered to have stalled once all backup pre-processing has completed and backup data
begins to write, but no progress has been made for the length of the defined timeout. If the timeout has
been reached, notification will be sent based on your
, and a kill signal will be sent to
the backup job.
To define stalled backups timeout select
File
!Preferences!General Preferences
and enter the number of
minutes in the
Minutes to wait before killing a stalled backup to a non-tape device field.
Backup Retention Policy
The backup retention policy (also referred to as the overwrite policy) determines whether or not a new backup
should be allowed to write over (thereby destroying) a current backup. A current backup is defined as one with a
label currently on record. The default policy regarding TSM backups is to keep all backups on file unless
explicitly expired (and removed) by the user. The default policy for tape backups is to prevent accidental
overwriting by requiring the user to manually expire a current backup before the same tape may be reused.
This option allows you to define the global backup retention policy. This will apply to all backup jobs unless you
explicitly change the backup retention policy for a particular backup job. Refer to the
the
settings for more information on overriding the global backup retention policy.
To change the global backup retention policy, select
File
!Preferences!Backup Retention Policies
from the
menu bar. The following screen will appear:
Storix System Backup Administrator
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Version 8.2 TSM Edition User Guide