
108 Performing Advanced Tasks and Operations
Managing Storage Policies
Storage policies is a licensed Advanced Feature of Pathlight VX that defines how to store media. Storage
policies are user-defined management functions that automatically create one or more copies of data on
tape and then release the data on disk as it ages. If you are licensed to use storage polices, you can manage
them from the Setup Policies screen.
Storage policies are a powerful tool that enable you to customize the sizing of the Pathlight VX based on
the amount of disk needed for high-speed backups and restores, and the amount of physical (tape) library
space needed for on-site storage. However, if storage policies are not set up and administered correctly,
policy management can degrade Pathlight VX performance. Review the following implementation
considerations before creating storage policies.
• How Many Policies to Create: The number of policies needed depends on the user's classification
of data. For example, certain data may need to be immediately copied to physical media (tape), but
stay on disk for a long time, such as CxO data. Other data that may not require high-speed restores
may be quickly copied to tape but only left on disk for one or two days, such as user shares.
Incremental backups, which often have a short lifecycle, may never be copied to tape. As a result,
users may have two, three, or more policies based on how data is classified.
• Associating Policies with ISV Media Pools: Storage policies are assigned to groups of virtual
media. Determining the specific data that is written to these media is controlled by a backup
application. In order to guarantee that certain data classes (for example, email or user shares) are
moved correctly by storage policies, the local administrator needs to configure the backup
application supporting Pathlight VX to write each class of data to a different ISV media pool. This
way, when storage policies are run against virtual media, the data on the virtual media is moved
correctly.
For example, a policy is created in Veritas Netbackup© to back up three Exchange servers. The
policy is associated with a media pool called Exchange which contains media barcodes 001, 002,
and 003. On the Pathlight VX, a storage policy is created for email called Exchange_PVX and then
is associated with virtual media barcodes 001, 002, and 003. Any backups to virtual media 001 to
003 will now contain Exchange data and be controlled by the Exchange_PVX storage policy.
As a best practice, administrators should create ISV media pools based on how data needs to be
protected. Pools can be created around groups of servers (for example, data on servers A and B
need to be on disk for 2 days; data on servers C and D for 5 days) or around types of data (for
example, all Exchange data goes to media pool X). These media pools will be assigned a specific
policy. When new virtual media is created, it will be assigned a storage policy and then added to
the appropriate ISV media pool.
• Space Reclamation on Storage Policy Media: Over time, the media used for storage policies
(known as Disk Extension media) develops wasted space as it is used in the Pathlight VX. Wasted
space is a normal by-product of using Disk Extension media in the system. This space will be
automatically reclaimed when virtual media are recycled and as backups expire. If you wish to
reclaim wasted space immediately, refer to Reclaiming Space on Disk Extension Media
on page
98. To determine which Disk Extension media are candidates for space reclamation, refer to
Viewing the Disk Extension Space Usage Report
on page 123. This report lists all formatted Disk
Extension media in the Pathlight VX and, for each media, provides percentages of fill level and
wasted space on the tape.
• Application Window: To make sure that storage policies do not interfere with backups to the
Pathlight VX, an application window is defined. This application window indicates the timeframe
when storage policies are not allowed to run and all Pathlight VX resources are dedicated to serving
backup application requests.
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