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Re: Stand alone backup

 
Steven Schweda
Honored Contributor

Re: Stand alone backup

> On another VAX 4000-106 that does have a
> CDROM [...]

As I said, every system should have a CD-ROM
drive.

> Is there any way I can somehow load this
> minimal $$$ system to a disk?. If at all
> possible, what much diskspace would this
> consume?

I found a VMS V6.1 (April 1994) CD-ROM in my
archives, and it looks as if everything is in
[SYS1...] (with the old ("classic"?)
Standalone BACKUP in [SYS0...]).

ALP $ dire /size /grand [sys0...]

Grand total of 3 directories, 129 files, 6832 blocks.

ALP $ dire /size /grand [sys1...]

Grand total of 21 directories, 662 files, 48541 blocks.

I assume that V6.2 is bigger, but it should
be similar. I haven't tried it, but a simple
BACKUP of cd:[SYS1...] to disk:[SYS1...]
might be good enough. (You could change the
"1" to something else, too, if you wish.)

A quick Google search for "VAX writeboot"
suggests that you don't need to worry about
that.

Only one way to find out.

What could go wrong?

Re: Stand alone backup

Hi,

Stephen,
Good idea, I will try to install it as per your suggestion tomorrow or next monday. I will then post the outcome.

Cheers,

Petran.
Art Wiens
Respected Contributor

Re: Stand alone backup

You mention the model of disks you have, but not the "type". Do they happen to be StorageWorks "bricks" in a shelf? You're taking the system down to do standalone backup anyways, get a fourth spare disk and replace one of your data disks and do an image backup to it...put it back on the shelf when you're done.

This (if possible) would provide you with better recovery capability if your system disk goes south. What are you going to do with a saveset of your system disk (on disk) when your production system disk crashes? Hopefully you will have standalone backup built on your two data disks.

Other than that, you have to insist on an outage window to do a standalone backup to tape.

You have to have something to fall back on unless you're really prepared to build a new VMS system disk when the production fails! That might be a bit more of an outage window when that time comes.

Good Luck,
Art

Re: Stand alone backup

Hi,

Art,

As I mentioned in one of my previous responses...

>A system backup to tape is not a good
>option for us for the following reasons -
>it requires more downtime and the second -
>even better one - is that the goal of this
>all is to port the VAX-es to a CHARON
>emulation which has no tape drive hooked up to the PC-hardware running windows as host....

I have to replace 6 vax installations on different production locations in Europe with Charon emulations and frankly I have no idea how the hardware is exactly boxed at every location.

I only need the system backup for migration to Charon-VAX. The major factor in this is to reduce down time to a bare minimum.....

So I will probably have to get my hands on a portable CD drive and boot $$$ to make my backups...

Cheers,

Petran.