TSM expiration vs CMOD expiration

[jsquizz]

Have a question, I think I know the answer

We have a TSM storage set labeled FOREVER that never expires on the TSM side.

For some reason, the expiration for all CMOD app groups that use that storage set is set to 180 days, which is incorrect. Per business requirement, these documents need to be held for 8 years, or 2920 days.

We currently stopped all deletions/purges done via arsmaint, we were running arsmaint -cdeirm (we removed -c and -d) until we figure out requirements on all of our application groups.

My question is this-

IF TSM is set to NEVER expire, but CMOD is set to 180 days, which one does it listen to?

My next question will depend on the answer to that   thanks in advance!

[Justin Derrick]

It obeys both.  TSM deletes the data never, CMOD deletes the metadata after 180 days.  If the Expiration Type is Load, then CMOD tells TSM to delete that data, and unless Archive Retention Protection is turned on (a.k.a. System Storage Archive Manager, a.k.a. SSAM), then TSM obeys and deletes that object.  If the Expiration Type is Sgement or Document, CMOD just deletes the metadata, and doesn't issue a delete command to TSM, so the documents persist, but are inaccessible because without metadata, searches don't find anything.

From what you describe, this is really, REALLY bad news, no matter how you slice it.

-JD.

[jsquizz]

It obeys both.  TSM deletes the data never, CMOD deletes the metadata after 180 days. 

Even if we aren't using -c and -d flags with arsmaint?

[Justin Derrick]

Down the rabbit hole we go! 

If TSM has a set retention period, it expires regardless of what CMOD/arsmaint says.  If TSM has an 'expire never' config, then it never deletes the objects until CMOD tells it to (either an expiration, or an unload).  CMOD only tells TSM to delete objects in secondary storage if the expiration type is load -- so in the situation you described, if you turned off expiration this week, then you were potentially deleting documents that should have had a retention of 8 years after 6 months until last week.

-JD.

[jsquizz]

Thank you, sure is going to be a task to figure this out.

Not sure why the life of data and indexes was set to 180, in a storage set named FOREVER.

Regarding certain app groups, I hope that the life of data and indexes is set to 365 days for the 1YEAR storage set

[Justin Derrick]

Keep us posted about how you diagnose (and hopefully resolve!) this issue. 

-JD.