After restore using Ignite tape

[Anand Sreenivasan]

Guys,
I am going to a DRP site this weekend and am going to try to recover HP using IGNITE tape for the first time. I need some answers for the couple of questions .
1) Is it true that some files like /etc/passwd, /etc/host ,/etc/fstab will not be pat of Make_tape_recovery.
2) I am planning to use TSM to recover my non root volumegroup. Do I have to create all that volumegroups and filesystems before starting my TSM backup or Should I just import it or will it be there when the restore is done from tape.
Thanks for all the help in this.

[Bryan D. Quinn]

Hello,

I have done about 4 sucessful DR recoveries of our system, so I will take a shot at answering your questions.

1. As far as I know, FALSE. Everytime I have recovered I have had my /etc/passwd, /etc/host and /etc/fstab recover just fine.

2. Yes you have to recreate your VGs and LVs. I presume that you are using disks that are at a DR site. They have probably been wiped or previously used by some other organinzation. So they will not have your LVM information on them. Therefore you will need to pvcreate them and then setup your VG's and LV's. I do this via a script which sources a control file which I maintain. We have in the neighborhood of 200 disks and doing this manually would take me forever in a DR situation.

Hope this helps!

-Bryan

[Anand Sreenivasan]

Bryan,
Thanks for a quick response. What happens to all the mapfile which gets created in the Ignite tape. What I was thinking is I can do vgimport with those files and I can restore data to all my filesystems. What do you think ?

[Thierry Poels_1]

hi,

1) Ignite DOES backup & restore the specified files. If the Ignite backup contains all the required file (e.g. inc_entire=/dev/vg00) then a full restore will be quite easy.
Common issues with Ignite:
- Instance numbers for LAN and TAPE will be rebuilt: lan1 might be interchanged with lan0 for example. This only happens if network cards or tape drive are added after system installation. dito for tape drives
- mirroring, if used, has to be set up manually

in short: things we can live with, Ignite is a magnificent tool.

good luck,
Thierry.

[Bryan D. Quinn]

Hello again,

I just reviewed my post and would like to elaborate a little more on the second question. When using different hardware to test your DR recovery, chances are that your device files for your disks are going to be different than what you have on your home system. Therefore, that hampers the recovery of your VG's.

Just a little add on information.

-Bryan

[Anand Sreenivasan]

Thanks Bryan and Thierry,
I have 20 EMC disks attached and I am going to use EMC disks even in my DRP site. Hopefully my map files should pick it up or else I will recreate it . I will let you guys know how it went. Thanks for your time and effort in explaining things.

[Bryan D. Quinn · Accepted solution]

Hello,

The problem with the vgimport is that it scans the pvs looking for the ones with the vgid that matches the vg that you are trying to import. Therefore, since you are at a DR site, it will not find those vgids on the PVs and the import will not work.

I hope that was clear, it sounds kind of confusing.

-Bryan

[Sundar_7]

Hi Anand,

I hope you have got answers for both the questions.

1) /etc/passwd, /etc/host and /etc/fstab are some of the files Ignite considers as ESSENTIAL. So they will be restored.

2) Even if device files are the same between the home and DR site, vgimport looks for the LVM headers which are not going to be present in the DR site EMC disks. So most probably you will have to manually create the VGs, LV and filesystems

Sundar

[Steven E. Protter]

with make_tape_recovery generated tapes the files you mentioned will be restored. Otherwise the system would not work.

IF you are using make_sys_image to create a golden image, you can define what files are excluded and included. If you exclude /etc/passwd a base file will be created on the client with what is needed. The install interface will prompt for example for a root password.

SEP

[Anand Sreenivasan]

Crystal clear guys. Thanks for all the input. I have a script ready to create all the PV's and VG's and LV's. Thanks again.