Backing up server to server

[stevegray]

I have a new rx8640-16 way server with 2TB of space that i would like to use to backup the 8 K servers we have.

The rx8640 is running 11.23. I will be upgrading to 11.31 in the next week.

The 8 servers are running 11.0 to 11.11.

I am looking for an easy way to do this. I cannot buy additional hardware/software.

I was thinking about doing cross mounts but i do not how to do it.

Any one have any thoughts or ideas what is the best way to do it??

I am kinda new to this and need all the help I can get.

Thanks
Steve

[Bill Hassell]

There are two very different answers and both are required. Using NFS (ie, I assume that's what you mean about cross-mount) will be very, very slow for more than a few gigabytes. rsync would be a better solution. Get rsync from software.hp.com

But you cannot recreate the boot disk(s) with simple file copies. You need to setup an Ignite/UX network backup system. In this case, vg00 would be backed up with the make_net_recovery command to your backup server. To recover from a complete disaster (loss of all disks), you use Ignite to boot and re-install vg00, then if necessary, build your additional volume groups and rsync the data to those volumes. Ignite/UX is on your system. The manual is found at:

http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-6440/5991-6440.pdf

[stevegray]

Thank you.

Only backing up non VG00 file systems.

I will take a look at rsync.

Steve

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Steve,

I hope when you say upgrade you mean cold install.

upgrade-ux has a very poor track record. The more complex the system, the less chance it will work.

To restore the system to pre-installation state you need and Ignite backup. Ignite is free, available at http://software.hp.com

SEP

[stevegray]

Thanks.

Just started reading up on it.

I see than rsync is for 11.23. Will it work on 11.31?

Still looking for ways to backup the 8 servers to the rx8640 server.

Steve

[TwoProc]

rsync "could" be the way to go if you are not backing up anything like Oracle servers.

The question would be:
Are the files being backed up fairly stagnant? Are the timestamps of almost all of largest files on the servers changed daily? Is this a datbase server, or something more like a web server?

If this is more like a web server wherein most of the files are stagnant, and few files actually change from day to day, then rsync is definitely the way to go.

If this is a database server wherein the bulk of the files on the server change daily - then I'd say that rsync may - or may not work for you, then it just gets down to how large a backup window you have, and how much data you have to move from each server.

If you have to shutdown databases for a long period of time to do cold backups, and the amount of data to be copied is large, a server to server backup solution may not be feasible at all.

Answer: Like most things, it depends.