Jodie,
No, I meant TDPO version 5.2. That's Tivoli's newest version.

Guess I'm gonna have to manually delete backups older than a certain day.

Thanks for the link. I've got a few questions -

Be VERY careful using Crosscheck. Like you said, the cross check won't find the backups (since they are on tape), so it will delete them from your catalog. At that point you can't use your backups again.

This can also be the case when you back up directly to tape. We backed up to tape directly using TDP/TSM and ran a crosscheck. Then ALL of my backups were gone!

It can also create a mess on tape if you use RMAN to actually delete the backup files. The catalog now thinks they are gone, but the are still out there "floating" on tape. Messy.
Para 2 - Why would the crosscheck expire backups that you'd directly backed up to tape?! Sounds bizzare. Also, it appears to contradict what you just said in the current post - that "TSM still does not expire backups"??

Para 3 - What do mean by "backup files"? Individual files or backup pieces? Btw, how did you know or verify that the deleted stuff still existed on tape afterwards?

I'm interested in knowing how you maintain different retentions of your daily backups, monthly backups and yearly backups. Also, retentions of your archivelog files. It'll be great if you could send me your scripts at [email protected].

I'm currently using different TAGS when initiating a daily, monthly or yearly backup (of the database). I need to retain my daily backups for a month, the qtrlies for an year, and year end backups for 2 years. I intend issuing the below commands to delete my backups.

DELETE BACKUP TAG "DWDEV LEVEL 0 DLY BKUP" completed before 'SYSDATE-30';
DELETE BACKUP TAG "DWDEV LEVEL 1 DLY BKUP" completed before 'SYSDATE-30';
DELETE BACKUP TAG "DWDEV LEVEL 0 QTRLY BKUP" completed before 'SYSDATE-365';
DELETE BACKUP TAG "DWDEV LEVEL 0 YRLY BKUP" completed before 'SYSDATE-730';

This appears to do the job..except that I can't seem to verify on the TSM side that the backups indeed got deleted, and that the tapes were released for use again! Any ideas on how I could verify that?

Thanks again.
- Anand