A500 Server Backup Question

[MacMcDonald]

I currently have over 100 A500 servers located around the world. We currently back up to tape drive. This is somewhat hit and miss, reliability of tapes, etc etc. I am looking at replacing either the tape drive or dvd drive with a hard disk to back up to disk. The hard disk would need to take the place of the current removable caddy, The DAT Drive is model C6365A and the DVD ROM is C4315A. Anyone know of a similar device with hard disk?

P.S. This thread has been moved from Disk to HP-UX > sysadmin. -HP Forum Moderator

[Ian Vaughan]

Howdy,
Firstly if I had over a hundred A500's I would be starting to look at a program of replacing them as they only have 12 months to run until they are obsoleted. Even at 2 a week it would take all year to replace them. Hopefully they are not running HP-UX 11.0 as it reaches end of support at the end of this year.

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/public_hp-ux_systems_support.pdf
http://www.hp.com/softwarereleases/releases-media2/history/slide2.html

On the subject of backups, how are the servers distributed? Are they in groups of 5's and 10's in certain sites or are they 1 per site over a hundred sites?
I assume that because you are talking about external storage (albeit only a disk in the smart enclosure) that they don't already have any. In which case is it not possible to have strategically placed Data Protector servers that consolidate backups (to disk) together rather than having a standalone backup on each individual server?

The disks for the smart enclosures are off the price list and I haven't seen any for a long time. I'll try & find a part number but you will struggle to get hold of 100 disks even from a 2nd user supplier.

This could be suplemented by strategically placed Ignite-UX servers (could be same machine as DP Cell Manager) to hold system images of the servers.

Let us know some more details and we'll try & help you out.
Cheers
Ian

[MacMcDonald]

Thanks for the reply Ian.

The servers we have (UK Army), are spread over 100 differant sites. We have ample spare smart storage caddys, that are currently DAT and DVD Rom. Could these be altered to accomodate a hard drive? Our setup is quite unique so our needs are pretty extreme to say the least. My intention would be to hotswap the dvd rom for a hard drive, run the backup, and then be able to store the backup off site. We also continue with the tape backup and this could offer some resiliance. Hope this makes sense.

Mac

[Ian Vaughan]

Wow that brings back memories - I did the HP ServiceGuard training course some years ago at Pinewood nr Bracknell and you guys had been in the week before learning about ServiceGuard clusters and land-rovers or something. I guess this is similar stuff.

Erm, bad news you can't hot swap Single-ended scsi as it *can* make the box panic. Furthermore the Smart Enclosures did have a hard disk option but I think these disks were 4GB and 9GB only. It was a while ago after all.

It might be more appropriate to take this conversation offline - my email address is in my profile. Just click on my name underneath my hat.

Kind regards
Ian

[MacMcDonald]

Ian,

Thanks for the reply - apologies for the delay in replying. Can't seem to see your email in your profile??