HP Archive Backup System for OpenVMS Guide to Operations

Overview
2.2 ABS Objects
2.2.4 Environments
2.2.5 Selections
Normally, one archive is associated with both save and restore requests. However, for save
requests that perform both full and incremental saves (at different times), you can define two
archives: the first for full saves and the second for incremental saves. This allows the full and
incremental saves to be performed on different tape volumes with different retention periods.
An environment object defines the criteria under which save and restore requests are executed.
The criteria defined in an environment include:
• Whom to notify when a backup or restore operation has successfully completed (or failed)
• The number of drives to use for the save or restore requests
• Who is allowed access to the environment (for data security)
• Default data safety checks to perform during save or restore operations (such as Full, XOR
Redundancy, CRC, or a combination thereof)
• Whether to enable log and listing files.
• How often to retry the save or restore operation before requiring user intervention
• Whether to perform job-wide pre- or post-processing commands
• UNIX compression, file system span, and symbolic link options
• The resulting disposition of the files that are saved
• Locking options
When you specify a set of disk or file specifications for a save or restore request, you are creating
(implicitly or explicitly) a selection object. A selection object contains one or more disk or
file specifications, together with additional selection criteria and operational attributes including
the following:
• Options to pass to the Backup Agent (agent qualifiers)
• The type of data to be saved (VMS files, Rdb databases and storage areas, UNIX files or
Windows files)
• Selection criteria using a combination of before dates and since dates (explicit selection
only)
• Specific files to exclude that would otherwise be included in the file specification
• Who is allowed access to the selection (for data security)
• Conflict options (what to do if the file being restored exists)
• For UNIX files and Windows files, the source node on which these files reside
If you specify a set of disk or file specifications as part of the save or restore request, these files
are stored in a default selection for that save or restore. You can use a default selection exclusively
in your saves and restores as long as the other selection criteria (including data type) are
the same for all files in the request. Alternatively, you can create your own selections explicitly
using either the MDMSView GUI or the CLI, and associate them with your save and restore
requests. Each save and restore can support multiple selections.
2-4 Overview