ISM life cycle management help

I have migrated 3 servers from Informix 7. to 10.00.FC7, Sun to Linux SUSE 9 and from logging to /dev/null to using ISM to do onbar backups. The backups, using ISM and ONBAR are working on all 3 servers just fine, but since I am not familiar with ISM administration, I am wondering how to manage the backup files and keep their integrity for use as a restore if needed. I am using the "file" type media to backup to 2 seperate directories; /backup/ISM/dbspaces and /backup/ISM/logfiles . At first I had planned to tar up the files after onbar completion and store them in another area for filesytem backup, but I found that I had to leave the "volume" file in place or it corrupts the setup and the backup no longer works. I have read that the "volume" file stores all the information about the backups, so I figured it needed to stay with each nightly set of backup files. I started looking at administrating the backups through nsradmin -c -- but I am so not a storage tech, so the screens are confusing to me. If anyone has a strategy and/or scripts that would help me figure out how to manage the backup files so that we could safely know that we could test a restore, I would appreciate any information offered. I have figured out a lot about how ISM works, but I have a feeling there is part of the puzzle that I am missing - or I am making it way too hard. Thanks in advance; Lisa.Nelson@agedwards.com Informix dba