Can we recover system with Ignite on all VG's?

[Gino Castoldi_2]

Hi,

L2000, HP-UX 11.0, Mirror/UX, MC/SG 11.09, AutoRAID 12H Storage array.

We plan on using Ignite-UX B.4.1.61 to create backups of our entire system which includes three VG's (vg00, vg01, vg02). Volume group vg01 contains three shared LV's that are included in our cluster pkg. VG vg00 is the boot disk which is mirrored, and vg02 is just one whole disk (not shared & not a boot
disk).

There are alternate links setup for the shared disks (setup on vg01 only).

Note: This entire system is a two node cluster that runs the OVO application.

Would there be any issues on recovery using those Ignite-UX backup tapes?


10 points to any good answer.
Thank you
Gino

[Bryan D. Quinn]

Hey Gino,

Ignite is only going to restore your VG00. It will not restore the data in your lvols outside of VG00.

Hope this helps!
-Bryan

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Gino,

Yes, Ignite can be used to back up all your VG's, though that is not it's primary purpose. You would be much better off to use Ignite for your root volume group and a conventional backup package for your other VGs. That way you can take advantage of the backup packages' restore capabilities to just run incremental backups, restore single files, etc.


Pete

[Bryan D. Quinn]

Gino,

One more thing, use the make_tape_recovery -A
This will option will get all the information about all the disks and vgs, but like I said it is strictly going to restore your base system. No data outside of VG00.

-Bryan

[Ross Zubritski]

Gino,

You most certainly can recover vg's other than vg00 using make_recovery. /var/opt/recovery/arch.include is the file you will need to modify.

Although this will work, HP's recommended practice is to only use ignite for vg00 and regular backups for others.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

RZ

[Cheryl Griffin]

Bryan,
That is not necessarily correct. It depends on how you created the archive. Check your options. As others have already stated, it can restore non-root vgs but that is not Ignite's primary purpose when talking about make_*_recovery.

[Bryan D. Quinn]

Ooops!!

Sorry for the mis-info! I was unaware of Ignite's potential to archive any data outside of VG00.

Thanks for getting me straight on that.

Sorry Gino!
Sorry everybody!

-Bryan

[Bernhard Mueller]

Gino,

sure you can do this, I use this as the only backup solution for systems which have only the root VG plus a small vg01 (all on internal disks).

using: make_tape_recovery -I -x inc_entire=vg00 -x inc_entire=vg01

it will also work for your VGs on the autoraid but as has been mentioned, there might be better and faster solutions if you want to backup more than 6 or 7 GB.

In case you need to recover, do not forget that you have to re-establish your LVM disk mirrors (in your case only the root disks I guess).

The limitation will be basically your tape drive (assuming that you use a cronjob at night) because if your recovery image does not fit on a single tape you will be prompted to insert another tape...

Regards
Bernhard

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Gino:

As noted, Ignite's 'make_tape_recovery' has the ability to include non-vg00 volume groups into the tape archive. See the man pages for 'make_tape_recovery' for the complete syntax and options available.

*However*, by limiting your Ignite contents to vg00, you have the ability to use the tape to recover your OS environment and then 'vgimport' your (otherwise intact) non-vg00 volumes. You can also use the recovery tape to clone your system. Limiting your recovery image to just vg00 provides the utmost flexability.

Another reason not to use Ignite as a general backup utility is that to recover a file from an Ignite tape requires the entire tape to be slowly traversed. 'pax' is used to actually write data to the tape, and unlike 'fbackup'/'frecover' there are no means to rapidly position the tape and extract selected data.

Should you ever need to recover a file or directory from an Ignite recovery tape, however, do:

# mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
# tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m filename

Regards!

...JRF...

[Helen French]

I wouldn't do this nor I suggest this. Do Ingite backup for your root vg (vg00) and normal backups for other VGs. This will reduce your recovery time in case of a disaster recovery, reduce complexity, data risk, media capacity issues etc.