BRARCHIVE copy to tape and to disk

[Fabian Briseño]

Hello Guys.
O.S: HP-UX
Version: 11.11


I have the following question.


I need to do the following.

I need to run a Brarchive backup to archive some offline DB logs. (this I know how to do).


The other thing I need and this is were my question comes in.

I need to run a brarchive to tape to backup an archive file and then simultaneously copy that same archive file
to disk (To a location I specify) while deleting the archive file from the original location.

Can this be done ?

Has Anybody done this ?


Any help you could provide, would be of great help.

[Eric Antunes]

Hi Fabian,

You must create a script like this:

#!/bin/sh
SOURCE_DIR=/...
TARGET_DIR_DISK=/...
TARGET_DIR_TAPE=/...

cp $SOURCE_DIR/* $TARGET_DIR_DISK
brarchive $SOURCE_DIR/* $TARGET_DIR_TAPE -- I don't know the exact syntax of brarchive...


Best Regards,

Eric Antunes

[Fabian Briseño]

Hi Eric.
Tanks for the tip.

Let me try it and i will let you know.

[Volker Borowski]

I would suggest two aproaches on this.

Option one: You do two runs (brarchive can handle to action a second copy)

First run:

brarchive -c -u / -s -d tape ....

-s = just save and do nothing else
-d tape = Do a backup to tape

Backup target needs to be customized in initSID.sap

Second run:

brarchive -c -u / -sc -d disk [-k yes] ....

-sc = second copy (use scd if you like to delete after successfull copy)
- d disk = Do backup to disk
-k yes = Want to use sw-compression to disk ?

If you do not like to delete the logs with the second run, you might neet to schedule a
brarchie -dsc
(delete second copy)
at a time convenient or let it be triggered by a filesystem usage monitor.

Option Two: Check out the sap documentation on brarchive/brbackup @ help.sap.com to verify if the new *stage* devices will help you. Those have been introduced to provide the option to do fast backups to a staging area, so that the performance impact to the archive filesystem is only short. In a second run, the stage area is copied to a tape.

We prefer aproach one, esp. if you do not delete the logs beforehand directly after the backup. We just schedule a SAVE (every three hours) to disk and a SECOND_COPY to tape (daily).
Nagios takes care to delete 100 logs (-dsc -n 100) when the filesystem is filed up to 65%.
If you like to do a brarchive every three hours, consider to do a
brspace ...switchlog...
right before the brarchive. This makes sure, that brarchive will not throw an rc=1 for "no log found to save".

Hope this helps
Volker