How to back up VSP?

[Gary Cooper_1]

I have a machine running HP-UX VSE-OE. It currently has 4 VMs which I take Ignite images of at key times. (I'm just about to script some daily backup routines for the VMs as well).

I am concerned about backups and disaster recovery on the VSP. I have seen that it is recommended that /var and /opt are backed up. I can clearly take an Ignite image of my VSP, but I see a couple of issues there - firstly it would be desirable not to have to shutdown the VMs first and secondly, this doesn't address the volume group where the VMs reside - if I look in smh, it lists 4 lvols all called /dev/vgvm/lv_vg+ although they aren't flaged as mounted and aren't listed by bdf.

I would be really grateful to hear what best practice is for backing up and disaster recovering the VSP.

Many thanks,

Gary

[Eric SAUBIGNAC]

Bonsoir,

Ignite willl do the job too on the vsp : you don't need to stop the VM, unless there is a performance issue with the ignite client ?

Regarding lvols, I guess that VM use them as disk backing store [ not the best idea from my point of view : LVM on LVM, not portable ] so it's quiet normal that they aren't mounted on the VSP. hpvmstatus -P <AnyVM> will show you how lvol are used by the VM.

Anyway Ignite, correctly used on the VSP,  will save all LVM structures. If you restore an Ignite image on the VSP all volume-groups will be imported ... if the disks they rely on are still there ;-)

HTH - Eric

[Gary Cooper_1]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the reply.

The problem that I have is that Ignite only operates on the root volume group vg00 and so doesn't image the volume group containing my VMs, namely vgvm.

Regards,

Gary

[Eric SAUBIGNAC]

Bonjour Gary,

- On the VSP you don't need an Ignite backup including the volume-groups that support the VMs.

Assuming that those volume-groups are only used as backing store for the VMs, then you need to save the volume-groups properties not the content of the volume-groups. An Ignite backup saves volume-groups properties.

As said in my first post, if the disks that support the VMs are still available, the Ignite restore process will automatically import all the VGs. And because disks still contain valid data you should be able to start the VM after the recovery of the VSP.

- Now if you want to save the content of the volume-groups that support the VMs, just do it from the VM, not from the VSP. In the very same way than with a physical box: Ignite from inside the VM for the OS and vg00, and traditional tools like DataProtector, Tina, Rman, and others for the applications and their data.

- And if you need to face a critical storage issue, save the VMs as previously said, and record from the VSP all information against volume-groups (used disks, logical volumes configuration, ...) that support the VM : you will need them to recreate the volume-groups. Then you will have to restore each VM individually.

Note about Ignite: in any case never forget the -x inc_entire=vg00 parameter.

Eric