Automate backup for VMS v7.3

[J Ancheta]

Good Day,

For our backup procedure, every night we place in a DLT tape in our 20/40 GB Table Top Drive and then run a backup script.

Can you please let me know if there is a way to automatically backup our Alpha Server 1200 to an external device/storage without user intervention? If so, can you please make some recommendations on which hardware/software we can utilize?

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

This is a seriously open-ended question, and the options here are usually better handled in a quick meeting with somebody rather than a back-and-forth in tiny ITRC text boxes.

The core questions that arise:

What's your budget?

What's the scale of your data?

How much does your data change?

How fast are your network links?

What are you centrally protecting against here?

Your disks appear to have microscopic capacities given that you're presently still using a 20/40 GB DLT, so a used or new LTO/Ultrium or a used or new loader may (will?) get you to a once-a-week tape change.

Options here can range up to using something akin to tarsnap or a local area or wide-area network for remote archival processing. To use a network connection and eliminating your tape media entirely.

As for the current manual process, typical practice is to run this archival processing from a nightly and self-resubmitting batch job. With this, the operator swaps tapes daily or weekly or at whatever intervals are locally required, and the batch procedure "just runs". Or the batch procedure runs, and stores the files remotely.

Other caveats: on-line BACKUP copies aren't necessarily reliably restorable (and you can easily search for and find the many previous discussions of how you can silently corrupt your archival data with the use of BACKUP /IGNORE =INTERLOCK mechanism) , which means that (depending on what data and what applications are involved) you can need to use RMU or mysqldump or other such tools, or (once a quarter?) use bootable disk.

Tossing a disk shelf into the box can be cheap, too, and you can use near-line or shadowing or such to get better snapshots.

Getting off of OpenVMS Alpha V7.3 would be useful, too, as newer releases get you access to (for instance) faster I/O operations, and newer releases have BACKUP encryption features which can be useful for off-site storage of sensitive data.

Anyway, a quick discussion with HP or an OpenVMS provider here can help you tailor a better solution to your budget and your data and your requirements.

[J Ancheta]

Thank you for your response. We need to backup every night and are looking at any possible low cost alternative means instead of having an operator pop in tapes.Our software only runs on V7.3. Unfortunately I don't know anything about what you've mentioned as we don't have any expertise on this equipment. I take it that backing up data can be done on the network but it's not reliable. We do have a SAN array. Could this be used as a backup or perhaps can the AS1200 use this instead of internal drives?

I will look into LTO/Ultrium. I don't know what a new loader is, can you please kindly provide a brand and model?

[J Ancheta]

From what I understand, our SAN has dynamic allocation capability.

[Hoff]

If you're happy with 20/40 GB DLT, then moving from that TZ88-class drive to a TZ885- or TZ887-class mini-loader or a TL8xx-class library may be an option, if you can find it. Personally, I'd tend to look to move to a newer and larger-capacity drive, as loaders and older tape drives tend to have higher maintenance costs than newer drives.

Again, the core questions that arise:

What's your budget? This drives the decision.

What's the scale of your data? This drives the decision,

How much does your data change? (How much data needs to be replicated drives the decision.)

How fast are your network links? This drives the decision.

What are you centrally seeking to protect against here? Yes, you guessed it, this too drives the decision.

>We need to backup every night and are looking at any possible low cost alternative means instead of having an operator pop in tapes.

Most folks are looking to reduce manual processing. That can be achieved with disk drives, with a bigger (higher-capacity tape), or with a tape loader, or with remote (network) storage.

>Our software only runs on V7.3.

That's comparatively unusual and usually points to latent bug(s) in the configuration. But OK.

>Unfortunately I don't know anything about what you've mentioned as we don't have any expertise on this equipment.

Therein lies the crux of the matter; you'll want to address that, or to engage external assistance to meet your goals.

>I take it that backing up data can be done on the network but it's not reliable.

Backups to remote hosts can be very reliable. That's part of the basis for Storage Area Network (SAN) disks and tapes, after all.

>We do have a SAN array. Could this be used as a backup or perhaps can the AS1200 use this instead of internal drives?

Archival storage can be based on Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN), on Network Attached Storage and on Direct Attached Storage (DAS), yes.

Also of interest here is if there's a SAN tape drive loader or library available here. If so, that can be an option.

The key question for all of these is bandwidth; do you have enough bandwidth to your storage to complete your backups within your available archival window.

>I will look into LTO/Ultrium. I don't know what a new loader is, can you please kindly provide a brand and model?

If hardware support is a prerequisite, then you'll typically want a Compaq- or HP-branded DLT or SDLT or LTO/Ultrium device. You'll want to acquire used or new hardware that your hardware support provider will support for you. If that's not an issue, then more options are available.

If you're using HP as your support provider, then start with the QuickSpecs for current and retired tape products and tape loaders and libraries here:

http://hp.com/go/productbulletin

Various folks here provide these sorts of upgrades and configurations as a service, including HP and various of the regular posters here. (Full disclosure: me, too.) And there are various used- and new-equipment providers around, and there are various auction sites that can have gear.

[Ian Miller.]

The important process to understand is how to recover your data when something bad happens. If you are unfamiliar with VMS and the hardware then do engage some more help to sort this out before something bad happens.

[J Ancheta]

Yes. We have a gold key with HP.

We are only looking into < $1K in replacing our DLT 20/40 table top. I've discussed potential approaches introduced in this thread (by Hoff) with my colleagues and although we do have the bandwidth and Fibre we cannot go this direction.

In the past, I have tried several times to find some kind of hardware on various websites such as HP for some kind of hardware that can achieve this but I end up going in circles as I don't know what is compatible with the AS1200 and VMS v7.3. I understand now that a tape loader can be used but I don't know what exactly that is or a potential brand/model.

Further help is much appreciated.

[Hoff]

The SOC (Systems and Options Catalog) and the QuickSpecs available at the HP Product Bulletin describe the various hardware options that have been available, and I've posted some part numbers that you can search for.

The supported options are scattered across a couple of different spots, but you can start here for one of the lists:

http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/archive/1200/

The OpenVMS Alpha V7.3 SPD would be another resource for investigating support, but that's a bit more difficult to locate if you don't have a copy of that on-site with your OpenVMS Alpha V7.3 distribution and documentation.

What's actually available on the used-equipment market varies (widely), and whether considering this in terms of the gear or the pricing or the fitness for purpose or whether the gear itself even works. Or whether the BACKUPs being created here can be reliable restored if and as and when needed, as Ian Miller mentions.

[Jon Pinkley]

J Ancheta,

What is the problem you are trying to avoid? If it is that you don't want to have someone to start the script at night, then the following may be sufficient.

If your backs fit on one tape (with compression), then there is no need to have an operator available at the time the backup actually is taken. You may want to have notification sent if there is a backup failure, but that should be a relatively rare event.

$1000 isn't going to buy much. What you can do for "free" is to have your backups split into two parts, a part you do during the day when you have coverage and the part that runs itself at night. During normal business hours you will load the tape that will be used, optionally the verify the tape labels by mounting them, and the submitting a batch jobs that will run later. Then the second part will all happen at night as a batch job.

Jon

[Andy Bustamante]

As Jon points out, your budget doesn't allow for very much change. The Alphaserver 1200 is extremely dated which limits your options even more.

Does your SAN support OpenVMS? If you have the network bandwidth available: Do you have the option to provide an nfs share to the VMS system? Using FTP to backup critical data files may be another option. Either of these requires that preserve VMS file attributes, ZIP is an option if you have enough VMS disk space to create your backup. Do you have access to a Symantec Veritas Backup server?

There are many options for what you can do, your budget disqualifies many of them immediately. The other unasked question: how important to your business is the ability to recover this server?

Andy Bustamante