Backing up a file system using the GPFS policy engine

If IBM Storage Protect is not available, you can use the fast scan capabilities of the GPFS policy engine to generate lists of files to be backed up and provide them as input to some other external storage manager.

This process typically includes:

Creating a policy file with LIST rules and associated criteria to generate the desired lists
Optionally, creating a snapshot to obtain a consistent copy of the file system at a given point in time
Running the mmapplypolicy command to generate the lists of files to back up
Invoking the external storage manager to perform the actual backup operation

For more information on GPFS policies and rules refer to Information lifecycle management for IBM Storage Scale.