Product Enhancement Request (RFE)
Title
Provide a Supported Retention Set Migration Capability Between IBM Storage Protect Servers
Why is this useful?
Organizations commonly use IBM Storage Protect retention sets to satisfy long-term regulatory, legal, and business retention requirements. These retention sets may need to be preserved for many years after they are created.
In our environment, retention sets with a 10-year retention period were created on an IBM Storage Protect server running on AIX. As part of our infrastructure modernization initiative, we need to decommission the AIX server and move to a Linux-based IBM Storage Protect environment.
Although a new IBM Storage Protect server has been deployed on Linux, there is currently no supported method to migrate retention sets from one IBM Storage Protect server to another while preserving retention set metadata and retention requirements.
As a result, customers are forced to maintain legacy AIX infrastructure solely to keep historical retention sets accessible until their retention period expires, which may be many years into the future.
IBM Support has confirmed that such a migration capability is not currently available and recommended submitting a Product Enhancement Request.
Who Should Benefit From This?
This enhancement would benefit:
IBM Storage Protect customers migrating from AIX to Linux.
Organizations performing operating system refresh and modernization projects.
Customers replacing aging hardware platforms.
Enterprises consolidating backup infrastructure.
Any customer with long-term retention sets who needs to decommission a legacy IBM Storage Protect server.
Current Challenges
Without a retention set migration capability:
Legacy IBM Storage Protect servers must remain operational for the entire retention period.
Customers must continue maintaining outdated AIX environments.
Additional hardware, operating system, and support costs are incurred.
Infrastructure modernization projects are delayed.
Disaster recovery and operational complexity increase because multiple Storage Protect environments must be maintained.
Proposed Enhancement
IBM should provide a supported utility or process that enables migration of retention sets between IBM Storage Protect servers.
Proposed Functionality
Connect to a source IBM Storage Protect server.
Discover and inventory existing retention sets.
Validate retention set integrity and metadata.
Migrate retention sets to a target IBM Storage Protect server.
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Preserve:
Perform validation after migration.
Generate migration and verification reports.
Enable decommissioning of the source IBM Storage Protect server after successful migration.
Supported Migration Scenarios
IBM Storage Protect (AIX) → IBM Storage Protect (Linux)
IBM Storage Protect → IBM Storage Protect (same version or supported version levels)
Platform migration during hardware refresh or OS modernization projects
Expected Benefits
Enables decommissioning of legacy AIX servers.
Reduces infrastructure and operational costs.
Simplifies platform migration projects.
Preserves compliance and retention requirements.
Eliminates the need to maintain obsolete environments solely for retention sets.
Improves overall customer experience with long-term data retention management.
Business Impact
The lack of a supported retention set migration capability creates a significant obstacle for customers who need to modernize their IBM Storage Protect environments. Customers with long-term retention sets may be required to maintain legacy infrastructure for many years after active workloads have been migrated.
Providing a supported retention set migration solution would allow customers to transition to newer IBM Storage Protect platforms while maintaining compliance with retention requirements and reducing operational costs.
