Backup more than 70 GB on DDS4 media tape

[Galal]

I want to backup more than 70 GB on DDS4(20GB) media tape by using the commands fbackup & make_tape_recovery .
it is possible to use more than one tape at once??

[Dennis Handly]

fbackup allows multiple tapes, in a sequential manner.

[Galal]

Thank you Dennis....
What is about make_tape_recovery command.

>fbackup allows multiple tapes, in a sequential manner

what you mean by sequential?? did you mean when the first tape is full is automatically ejected and ask for another empty tape??

[Bill Hassell]

The DDS4 stores 20GB of data. When writing to the drive in compressed mode, the bits are encrypted to reduce repetitive characters so you might get 21 GB of apparent storage or you might get 100 GB of apparent storage. It all depends on the patterns in your files. 40 GB is commonly quoted as "typical" but not really. You can usually expect about 25-30 GB on each DDS4 tape.

> it is possible to use more than one tape at once??

This isn't clear. Do you mean that you have several tape drives and you want to backup to all the tape drives at the same time? make_tape_recovery and fbackup can write to one tape drive each but not in parallel.

Or do you mean you want to fit all your backups on one tape? In that case the answer is a definite no, for two reasons:

1. 70 GB won't fit on a DDS4 tape unless your data is very, very compressible. Since you can't control that requirement and an average HP-UX install with no applications of data files will compress to about 1:1.2 so 25 GB will fit on the 20 GB DDS4 tape. You will have to use fbackup and keep feeding tapes in as each tape fills up. You'll probably need 3 tapes.

2. You can't combine make_tape_recovery and fbackup onto the same tape. Not only will the two backups not fit, but the MTR tape must be bootable so it has to be first on the tape, and fbackup always rewinds the tape when it starts so there is a valid table of contents.

It sounds like you want one tape to backup everything but you must use a minimum of two tapes (MTR and fbackup) and then reduce your data down to no more than 25 GB so fbackup won't need another tape. Since this is probably not possible, the other choice is to get a tape changer. There are small tape changers that hold 6 tapes so you can write the MTR to one tape, then change tapes and write fbackup to the next tape and use a chgvol script for fbackup that loads another tape as needed.

[Galal]

I have only one tape drive..

by using fbackup
I want to ask when the first tape is full, the server automatically eject this tape and asks for another empty tape???

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Yes fbackup will support that. Read the manpage for fbackup and you will see that you can specify a config file with fbackup and within that config file use the keyword chgvol to specify a script you write which will eject the tape and potentially send an email to an operator to change the tape.

I have to mention if you are on 11.31 (11iv3) you should read the following warning:

WARNINGS
The fbackup, frecover, and ftio commands are deprecated for creating
new archives. In a future HP-UX release, creation of new archives
with these commands will not be supported. Support will be continued
for archive retrieval. Use the standard pax command (portable archive
interchange) to create archives. See pax(1).



HTH

Duncan

[Dennis Handly · Accepted solution]

>did you mean when the first tape is full is automatically ejected and ask for another empty tape?

Yes.

[Prashanth Waugh]

Hi Galal,


Pls assign the points to these Unix Guru.They have spend their valuable time for u.

Reagrds
Atul

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Make sure that you confine your use of an Ignite recovery tape to vg00 and the standard HP-UX logical volumes and filesystems.

Ignite recovery images are intended for cloning the operating system and/or recovering a server in the event of a disaster. They are not designed to backup application data, although non-vg00 filesystems and files can be included.

Keep your Ignite image to vg00 and you will make cloning, recovery and/or operating system upgrades much easier.

Regards!

...JRF...

[prasadb]

if you follow Ferguson's point then the command for the same will be :


make_tape_recovery -x inc_entire=vg00 -AIv -a , typically /dev/rmt/0mb

and if has problem, then check entry at /etc/fstab