Managing Policies

Data protection policies are rules for managing client data and are organized into a hierarchy of policy domains, policy sets, and management classes.

Policy domains

A policy domain is a group of clients to which the same policies apply.

Policy sets

A policy set is a group of rules for backing up, archiving, and protecting data. Each policy domain can have one or more policy sets, but only one policy set can be active at a time. The active policy set is the group of rules that the clients in a policy domain can use to manage data.

The following list shows examples of rules that can apply to a group of clients:

• How frequently a file can be backed up
• How files that are in use during a backup or archive process are handled
• Where the server initially stores backup versions of files and directories and where it stores archived copies of files
• How many backup versions the server keeps of files and directories
• How long the server keeps backup versions of files and directories and archived copies of files

By having multiple policy sets, you can change the rules for client backup as needed by activating a different policy set. Some uses of multiple policy sets include the following examples:

• You might have one policy set for weekday backup and another policy set for weekend backup. During the week, the policy set for weekday backup is activated.
• You might have one policy set that backs up only modified files to a particular storage pool, and another that backs up all files to a different storage pool. The first might be for normal daily backups, and the second might be for special cases.
• You might create a copy of the active policy set, and then modify and activate the copy. If you encounter unexpected problems after you activate the new policy set, you can activate the original policy set.

Management classes

Each policy set contains one or more management classes. A management class describes the rules for managing client data. The rules can describe how to back up, archive, or migrate files. Although only one management class is required in each policy set, you can create multiple management classes to differentiate and separately manage categories of data.

When a policy set is active, the user of a client node can associate files with any management class in the policy set. The rules that are defined in the management class determine how the associated files are backed up, archived, or migrated.

Each policy set has a default management class. The default management class manages client files when another management class is not assigned to, or appropriate for managing, a file.

To view the policy domains that are defined to the IBM® Storage Protect servers that are managed by the Operations Center, open the Policies page.