DRD - Can it replace Make Recovery

[waytec]

Hello,  I am only 6 months into HP-UX Administration so please forgive my novice question.   Has anyone replaced the method of System Recovery from Tape with Dynamic Roor Disk?   My management seems to think with all the SAN Sotrage availabilty we have that relying on a tape for System Receovery is not acceptable.  I have explaing that the is Tape is bootable and HP's recommended soloution, besides Ignite which is not an option.  All responses are welcomed.

[Torsten.]

The advantage of the tape based solution is simple: you can store it on a safe place and use it for desaster recovery, even on a different place.

[donna hofmeister · Accepted solution]

your job -- as an administrator -- is to safe-guard your system(s), management or not.

if you don't have any ignite images, you won't be able to recover in the event of 1) a hardware failure 2) failed patching (or other software changes) 3) a disaster. you need to stress these points to the folks that need to hear this so that they understand that are a responsible (to the point of being liable) for their decisions.  you might also need to remind them that production is production (even if its hpux).

so enough preaching....

i suspect that yes, if you are routinely going thru the DRD process, that you could use this as a stop-gap.  (you ARE going to test this, right?  of course you are)  (and you caught the routinely part too, yes? that implies a certain level of frequency...) however, this does nothing to address DR.

tortson is absolutely correct that making an ignite tape (which you've tested, right?) and getting it off-site is critical.  does this big fancy SAN have a tape library?  can you use that?  do you have other HPUX boxes?  can you set-up one of them as an ignite server?

[waytec]

Thanks for everybodies input.  You response is exactly what I needed to pass on to my management, especially the "liable" statement.  I am confident we will continue to rely on the Make Tape Recovery until our Unix's box have been replaced.  Thanks again.

[Ken Grabowski]

Disaster recovery principles do dictate that a system image should be stored in a remote location.  This is commonly done by creating tapes and sending them to an offsite vault on a regular basis. However, it is not the only option.  Many companies have DR sites that data is replicated to.  Many tape backup systems are being replaced with dedupe systems that are then replicated to multiple sites.  And some storage arrays are also replicated to multiple sites. So if your management is saying "with all the SAN Storage availability"  (mine has never said something like that), you might have a nice Depude system with a replicated SAN out there that eliminates the need for tape.

However, the bootable OS image is still something you want. But it doesn't require the make_tape_recovery. You can use a make_net_recovery to another HP-UX host as long as you have more than one HP-UX server.  In most of the shops I've worked, we have set up one host to be the ignite recovery server and pointed make_net_recovery images to it. That server of course gets backed up too. A make_tape_recovery of that server would be nice, but as long as you have backups of the ignite file systems with the recovery images, you only need a copy of the OS install DVD's for a recovery process.

In a DR scenario, build or recover the HP-UX Ignite server host, recover the backups of the ignite recover file system, then follow the procedures for building your replacement servers over the network from ignite recover images.

DRD may work in a DR scenario as long as your using SAN Boot and the disk your using DRD to image to is replicated to another site. Remember, a Disaster Recovery plan assumes a complete lose of a data center and everything in it.

[Bill Hassell]

Just to add a bit more to think about:

smoke and rubble...

If your building burns down or explodes, that fancy SAN storage is useless. On the other hand, if you have made tape backups *AND* stored them at some other location (your disaster recovery site), then with a replacement machine, you'll be back up in just a hour or two (notwithstanding recovering data for any external storage your system might need). If you have a single HP-UX system, then Ignite tape backups of vg00 (only) is alll you need. For multpile HP-UX systems, an Ignite server becomes more feasible and economical -- but it must also be backed up on tape for the same reason - smoke and rubble.

Your Ignite backup is just to recover the internal disks, specifically vg00. The rest of your data should be backed up separately using fbackup or pax or other tool. Note that none of these tools will work until HP-UX is recovered. You don't need to run Ignite every day, weekly or bi-weekly is fine. Rotate your tapes so you have at least 3-4 copies back before recycling an old tape. The external data or non-vg00 data can be backed up more often.