Storage management policies

Storage management policies are rules your administrator defines in order to manage your backups and archives on the server.

Your data is associated (or bound) to these policies; then when the data is backed up or archived, it is managed according to policy criteria. Policy criteria include a policy domain, a policy set, a management class, and a copy group.

Policies determine:

• Whether a file is eligible for backup or archive services.
• How many backup versions to keep.
• How long to keep inactive backup versions and archive copies.
• Where to place the copies in storage.
• For incremental backup, policies also determine:
  • How frequently a file can be backed up.
  • Whether a file must change before it is backed up again.

If you have the Tivoli® HSM client installed, your administrator also defines rules that determine whether files are eligible for migration from your local file systems to storage.

This topic explains:

• Policy criteria (policy domains, policy sets, copy groups, and management classes).
• How to display policies.
• How Tivoli Storage Manager associates your data with policies.