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A management class is a collection of backup and archive copy groups that establishes and contains specific storage management requirements for backing up and archiving data. An administrator can establish separate management classes to meet the backup and archive requirements for different kinds of data, such as:
Most of the work you do with storage management policies is with management classes. You must associate (or bind) each file and directory that you back up and each file that you archive with a management class. If you do not associate a file with a management class, Tivoli Storage Manager uses the default management class in the active policy set. If you do not specify a management class for directories, Tivoli Storage Manager uses the management class in the active policy set specifying the longest retention period.
You can use include statements in your include-exclude list to associate files with management classes. See Selecting a Management Class for Files for more information. In your client options file dsm.opt file, you can associate directories with a management class, using the dirmc option. See Selecting a Management Class for Directories for more information.
Within a management class, the specific backup and archive requirements are in copy groups. Copy groups define the specific storage management attributes that describe how the server manages backed up or archived data. Copy groups include both backup copy groups and archive copy groups. A management class can have one backup copy group, one archive copy group, both, or neither.
A backup copy group contains attributes that are used during the backup process to determine:
It also contains attributes to manage the backup versions of your files on the server. These attributes control:
An archive copy group contains attributes that control:
When the server is unable to rebind a file to an appropriate management class, the server uses one of two values to determine the number of days to retain the file. If it is a backup version, the server uses backup grace period retention. If it is an archive copy, the server uses archive grace period retention. For more information about grace periods, see Using a Retention Grace Period.