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.