What is an archive?

An archive is an object in TSM that contains files and folders that are all treated as one object. You choose a retention period for the archive object and everything in the archive will expire at the same time. Think of it like this, as soon as an archive object is created, TSM starts a timer for the length of the chosen retention period. When the timer ends, TSM automatically deletes all files and folders in the archive. There are some important things to remember about archives:

• All files and folders in an archive object act as a single object for purposes of retention inside of TSM
• Once the timer is started there is no way to reset it or change it
• When an archive object expires it's gone forever
• You can restore the data and then create a new archive
• You will not get a warning that an archive is about to expire
  
• You can restore individual files or folders from an archive, so you don't have to restore everything at once
• There are no versions of archive objects
• If you archive the same file 20 times there will be 20 archives of that file and all of them will have their own expiration timer
• Archives can be deleted manually
• You can remove archive object before it expires
• You can remove individual files or folders from an archive object
• Archives are created manually or by local scripts
• There is no client scheduler for archives like there is normal backups
• You can create local scripts to do automatic archives and run them via cron or scheduled tasks