Netting Out NetBackup

We've been getting a lot of questions lately about ways that Backup Reporter can report on things in the future.  There are lots of ways to do forecasting but one of the best ways to look in to the future has to do with backup media retention.  As you know when NetBackup does a backup it stores a date and time that the backup will expire.  When the backup is expired that space on disk or tape is available to be written to again.  Setting retention levels is a common way to decide how far back you can restore data but as the environment you are protecting grows so does the amount you need to spend on disk or tape to keep up.  At some point someone usually says "hey we're spending too much on tapes (or disk space)".  Rather than spending money on buying more perhaps we can see what will become available or expired in the future and more accurately predict what can be reused.  Let’s say by way of example that you do...