Hello All,

We have a number of clients that we are using Image Manager with and it is happily producing Daily (CD.SPI), Weekly (CD-CW.SPI) and Monthly (CD-CM.SPI).

What I would like is if after 4 weeks the CD.SPI and CD-CW.SPI files would start to be removed so I would only have monthly (CD-MW.SPI) files that were older than a month.

If anyone has any idea's on how to achieve this that would be great.

Thanks,

Simon
 

Hi Simon!  Thanks for your feedback - that's a pretty decent idea, and I think we can accommodate you.  Stay tuned to this thread as I believe I will have news on this in the very near term.

We have added the feature you requested.  I hope you you will forgive us for the delay between your request and delivery of this new functionality.  You may download the new ImageManager here:

http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/files/folders/shadowprotect_server_edition/entry1217.aspx 

Note that this new functionality will remove older daily (-cd) and weekly (-cw) collapse images (and therefore also any of their dependencies).  We cannot remove older Monthly (-cm) collapse image files as they are the highest level in the collapse hierarchy and deleting any monthly collapse file would break the chain and orphan ALL image files created after that monthly image file. Monthly collapses must never be deleted/removed.  If we add a yearly collapse, then it would be possible for us to delete some monthly collapse files.  Is this of interest to anyone?

 Hello Nate,

First off can I say how happy I am to be a reseller of Storagecraft!! The type of response your team have given is fantastic and it shows you care about your products and customers. Thank you.

Personally I think adding a yearly collapse is the way forward as this will satisfy companies who need to keep an archival backup for a number of years and if this is available as an option we will be using it.

One other thing that would be a nice to have is the option of specifying the collapse date. So basically having a monthly collapse at the start or end of the month as this fits in with the traditional way of thinking to backups BUT like I said a nice to have what you have done already is plenty enough.

 Thanks,

Simon
 

Thanks for the kind comments, and you're quite welcome.

I think you have some good ideas there.  Perhaps we can allow the user to specify if they want a weekly collapse to be on the first, or last day of the week, and similarly if they want the monthly collapse to be on the first day, or last day, of the month.  We'll discuss this. Also, a yearly collapse would not be difficult for us to implement, and we have discussed it before.  A yearly collapse would enable us to support a continuous incremental backup job which generates incrementals for literally hundreds of years.  Without yearly collapses, you'd probably want to kick off a new base once per decade or so.  Realistically this should be just fine, as most people won't even be using these platforms in a couple of decades.  The real advantage of a yearly collapse is that you could get rid of the monthly collapses for older years, saving quite a bit of disk space.
 

Hello Nate,

If you could get the above implemented then it would basically make Image Manager a set it and forget application without any further involvement other than software upgrades.

 If you need a beta tester for the above give me a shout.

Thanks again for you help,

Simon
 

Yeah, it kind of works like that already.  I mean even today you can set up a policy and let it run for years without bothering with it.

We have a host of other very cool ideas for ImageManager along other lines that I think you guys are going to like, but you'll just have to wait until we surprise you with them to find out more about 'em.

Keep the feedback coming.
 

Hi Nate,

I look forward to them!!

Cheers,

Simon 

Me too.  We run ShadowProtect on all of our production servers at StorageCraft and these new features I alluded to are things that we ourselves need, and I'm pretty confident that they're gonna make the IT admins out there ridiculously happy.

I have mentioned a few times here about what I'd like from Image manager and when nothing was forthcoming (not a complaint, not many seemed interested in what I wanted, or didn't understand) I made my own solution.

We keep incrementals for 28 days and collapse them into a new base weekly.

It requires making a batch file that pipes the relevent files into a command line to sbrun and making it a scheduled task for the collapse process. It takes as long as taking a new base to collapse, but at least we get our 28 day period of recovery on disk (forever on tape).

While it isn't quite set & forget, if I had more time I could make it happen