Image software for UNIX/HPUX OS

[Peter Grant]

I am investigating the use of full system image capture software (or process) for all flavours of UNIX including HP11. I need to be able to take an image of a system at a point in time and be able to restore back to that same configuration in a one step process. (Reinstalling the OS and recreating directories from backup is the current method employed but is prone to human error even if strict procedures are followed.)

A comparative Windows technology would be Symantec Ghost.

Any suggestions appreciated

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi,

Take a look at ignite software for HPUX

http://www.software.hp.com/products/IUX/overview.html

Hope it helps,

Robert-Jan.

[Pete Randall]

Hi Peter,

I would suggest you take a look at the Software Porting and Archive Center's "X11/Viewers" offerings:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/X11/Viewers/

And, in particular, ImageMagick

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/X11/Viewers/ImageMagick-5.5.3/



Pete

[Pete Randall]

Hi Peter,


Sorry, wrong kind of "image"!!!


Pete

[Pete Randall]

In the HP-UX environment, the solution is Ignite, which Robert-Jan pointed you to. If you're looking for something more portable amongst different flavors of Unix, I don't think you're going to have much success.


Pete

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Peter,

the only product that I am aware of that will do this right now is Veritas Bare Metal Restore, for which you also need to own Veritas NetNackup:

http://www.veritas.com/products/category/ProductDetail.jhtml?productId=bmr

There's a reasonably informative technical paper on BMR here:

http://eval.veritas.com/downloads/pro/bmr/bmr-wp-rev071502.pdf

BMR is supposed to work on HPUX,Solaris,AIX,NT,W2K

I have no experience of how straightforward/complex this product is to use, but given the various different platforms I can't see it being very easy...

Be prepared for a big price tag for this... NetBackup itself is fairly expensive, and this product will no doubt be even more so...

HTH

Duncan

[Duncan Edmonstone]

oops! was that a freudian slip!

I did of course mean NetBackup *NOT* NetNackup!

Also, as the others have pointed out, Ignite will do this for you on HP-UX, on Solaris I think JumpStart has this functionality, and AIX has NIM... but thats three different products to learn.

HTH

Duncan

[Shannon Petry]

Ignite is a tool for creating "golden images" of operating systems as well as allowing for network installation.

However, this does NOT backup non-OS software.

You will need a separate solution for backing up data and applications not associated with the operating system.

Sun produces Jumpstart, which in functionality is the same. There are many solutions of varying costs which can backup data from most OS's, (HP-UX, SunOS, Windblowz, etc...) from a single server. These include Tivoli(IBM), Omniback (HP), Netbackup(Veritas), Networker(Legatto), and some more inferior products like Arkia, Windoze backup pro (by whoever owns crystal reports).

Note that the inferior products do not support concurrancy nor multi-threading.

Sincerely,
Shannon

[Steven E. Protter]

Ignite is the way to go. It is more powerful and flexible than Ghost.

It is somewhat more complex to administer and implement.

I highly recommend Ignite training at education.hp.com

We're using it for server imaging and disaster recovery backups.

SEP