DP backup not backing up VMS$COMMON directory

[Jon Pinkley]

Guenther,

Do you know if it is possible to install DP on a bootable CD so it would be possible to do a "bare metal restore" of a system disk?

Jon

[Robert Gezelter]

Jon,

I suspect it is not so much a question of a "bare metal" CD/DVD as it is a question of a special purpose node.

Creating a CDROM/DVD of a special purpose node, and using the memory disk for paging (or no paging file at all) can certainly be done. For that matter, that has been feasible since at least the VAX-11/750 days.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Jon Pinkley]

Ok, I will ask the question stating only the goal.

If DataProtector is being used as the only backup for both system and data disks, what is the recommended procedure to minimize the time required to get a working system up at a disaster recovery site?

Jon

[Guenther Froehlin]

Well, there were plans to incoporate enough DP context on the OpenVMS Installation DVD to be able to do a DP restore like for a complete system disk. I have not heard of that this was ever implemented.

The way the DP VMS client worked then it required a writable disk for some housekeeping files and TCP/IP up-and-running. If that is still true then it might be a bit more work to make such a bootable DVD with a nice DP startup so the DP client finds the current DP Cell Manager node.

Without a bootable media like this you have to restore your system disk first using BACKUP and also restore any other disk containing DP data (which is by default kept on the system disk). Then you can start a restore operation through the DP Cell Manager through some other node's DP GUI.

/Guenther

[Dean McGorrill]

hi manikandan,
I used to have a little com file in [0,0] of my system disk to rename vms$common.dir to syscommon.dir and
then back to vms$common.dir. This fill fix
your file id name. Dean