Skip to Main Content
IBM System Storage Ideas Portal


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM System Storage products. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Planned for future release
Created by Guest
Created on Dec 2, 2019

More granular level of tape data retention than just categories

At the host, a user can set more than one retention period for a category/media type for an LPAR. The TS7700 allows only one retention period per Category by design.
The issue is that if a host user modifies the retention period at the host
(maliciously or accidently), the longest retention period for the category must be used at the TS7700 to ensure the volume is not deleted before its time. This causes a side effect where logical volumes are held longer than needed. For instance, if category xC000 has 3 retention periods at
the host (2 weeks, 1 year and 10 years) then all lvols in this category must be held for 10 years on the TS7700 to avoid the case where someone
changes a retention period of one of the 10 year volumes to 1 day and it expires prematurely.
Dual Authentication at the zHost would help this issue from occurring however, with the potential introduction of the ability to have immutable
retention periods, it becomes a problem again since there is no flexibility in choosing multiple expiration times. This item is a request to add the ability to enter volume level retention
periods. This could be done in dataclass along with the LWORM capabilities and as part of immutable lworm retention periods.
Also note that this item should be included as part of the Dual Control mechanism.

Idea priority High