Re: BRMS with "alternative" media such as RDX, sticks, etc WAS: Backup Tape rotation with Corona-virus

In regard to people not knowing how BRMS works, keep in mind that a lot of
IBM i shops don't use BRMS. I think this is particularly true for smaller
systems, which is the majority. That's not knocking BRMS, it's just
pointing out that many shops use standard IBM i commands for working with
and managing backup media, performing backups, and performing restores.
They often write their own CL commands and scripts, and possibly set
up menu options to perform such operations rather than purchase BRMS.

In regard to media labels, I suppose your comments pertain to physical
labels, volume names, and in the case of optical devices, the optical file
names that might be attached to a particular SAVE operation. While BRMS may
manage that for users, what happens when you want to restore something on a
system that doesn't have BRMS installed, or you don't have the BRMS
database?

I would suggest that an appropriate naming convention would help a restore
operation in that case. And in the case of scripts that save to optical
media such as RDX or USB stick, users can WRKOPTVOL or WRKLNK to navigate
and drill down to see what is stored on the media. For example:

/tue/iasp1/mvempdb

might refer to LIBRARY MVEMPDB from IASP1, saved last Tuesday.

In other words, volume and optical file labels can be handy for restore
operations.

Another nice feature of optical file labels is that SAVE operations can
replace content that has the same label, as appending new content to the
end of a volume. Thus you eliminate the need for deduplication services.
For example, SAVE operations for this Tuesday might replace saved content
from last Tuesday.