Related to SafeGuarded Copy on the DS8000. SGC backup copies CANNOT be deleted. Today, a person with adminstrator rights can still log on and delete off valid SGC backup copies. Customers have been asking for this capability to be removed.

For all those still voting for this IDEA, please see the earlier comment. I don’t know why the status has not updated yet to match the internal status but this has been marked as already implemented. The comment outlines all steps necessary to sufficiently protect the SGC backups. The IDEA will not be implemented as written but following the outlined steps will prevent any potential accidental or malicious removal of the SGC backups. 

The ability to remove all users authority to delete SGC backups already exists. You can do the following to lock out deletion of backups.

- Setup User Administrators in CSM. It's best if these users are from a different "area" to provide separation of duties. These users will be the only ones that can provide user access

- Remove all Administrator roles in CSM. Remove any users as admins so that no one has complete authority over the server.

- Setup Operators with limited Capabilities to manage the CSM sessions. You can now define what actions an Operator can perform. To prevent any user from being able to delete an SGC backup, ensure that NO operators have the action "Expire Safeguarded Backups" selected. This will prevent users from being able to delete backups unless this is overwritten by the User Admins in order to free capacity.

- Setup Dual Control. For highest protection, enable the Full Dual Control mode. But for those customers that want to primarily protect their SGC environment, you can now enable SGC Dual Control mode which will require two people to authorize any action against an SGC session. Note that even if you have SGC Dual control mode on, if not one has the "Expire Safeguarded Backups" authority, then they still will not be able to delete the backups.

With the above setup the SGC backups will be protected from deletion. However, it still provides the mechanism to enable the deletion in times of critical need when the capacity usage may end up impacting production. In these cases it's important to have the proper processes in place in your business to ensure that the right requests are made to enable the deletion capabilities but then to disable the deletion capabilities immediately upon executing the action plan.