backup software

[Carol Balla]

Can anyone recommend any backup software other than OmniBack and SAM(fbackup) for an HP9000 I70 box running HP-UX 10.20?

[Alex Glennie]

No, the only 2 methods / B/U applications we use in the UKRC that are supported are the 2 you mentioned .... anyone else heard of anything ?

[Antoanetta Naghiu]

You can use fbackup from command line not only from sam. As well any general Unix backup tool: cpio, tar. I would recommed to use HP specific (fbackup) or cpio. Tar just for small specific backups. I wouldn't recommend dump, pax, dd but they exist and are usable.

[Cheryl Griffin]

There is also the Ignite utilities of make_sys_image and make_recovery.

[James R. Ferguson]

Carol:

I use fbackup/frecover scripted to my own tastes for routine as well as ad hoc backups. The graph file that drives it use is very nice. The ability to create a text file from a tape directory and then edit it for use by frecover is but one nice feature. You might (re)consider looking at fbackup for your own use.

...JRF...

[Rick Garland]

Veritas, Legato, and others exist as well.
If you are looking for a package, if not, UNIX has numerous utilities included.
tar, cpio, dump, etc. fbackup is HP-UX tool so a restore could only be done on HP-UX. Some of the utilities are independent of flavor.
tar is not really a good back-up utility for large amounts of data.

[John Palmer]

I use dump (for hfs filesystems usually only /stand) and vxdump (for vxfs filesystems). They are both fast and reliable and the interactive restore (vxrestore) facilities are great.

Both operate on a single filesystem and you would have to write a script to control them.

I have done several disaster recovery tests and not had a problem.

Regards,

John

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

Be careful in choosing a backup solution. While free is nice, it is an insurance policy and we all know that a cheap policy doesn't always pay off when it is needed.

For instance, the classic Unix utilities: cpio, tar, pax, dump were OK in the days when disks were a few dozen megs in size. But now, backups are measured in Gigabytes and both files and filesystems have long sinc left the realm of 32-bit addressing (ie, 2 Gbytes max filesize). For classic tools, they cannot backup these large files for if they could, their internal format would have to be altered, thus violating legacy Unix standards.

True, there are GNU backup utils that handle these tasks, but there are more practical matters such as reliability and error recovery. cpio/tar/pax/dump all share the classic (but archaic) method for indexes: (none). This means that to determine what is actually on the tape, you must read the *entire* tape as in: tar -tvf /dev/rmt/0m

NOTE: Ignite/UX is a great system recovery and cloning tool. It is *not* a restore tool. It is designed to recreate /vg00 (the root volume group) should something bad happen to the root disk, but unless you customize the inventory scripts, other disks are not part of the Ignite tape. And the Ignite tape is not usable as a selective recovery method, ie, recovering a single file is not possible.

Commercial grade backup utils will instead create a complete backup list (index of files and directories) including high speed retrieval codes and multi-volume markers for fast restores. fbackup does this with DDS tapes as an example. This backup list also includes reel volume information which means that to restore a file (or files), you just put the last reel in the drive and in less than a minute, the recovery software will tell you which reel to insert.

Then recovery will space through the tape at ultra highspeed looking for setmarks or EOF markers which are recorded at regular intervals. This, a 200 Gbytes backup onto 8 reels of tape will require less than 20 minutes to restore any file.

Another characteristic is error recovery. tar/cpio/pax/dump see a tape error nad report: errno 5 (I/O error) and terminate immediately (that's not good). Commercial programs will begin an error recovery process to geet past the bad spot (if truly unrecoverable) and resync so as to salvage whatever is left on the tape.

And speaking of Gigabytes, it seems that GB of data goes hand in hand with 24x7 operation which leaves little or no time to perform the backup. Commercial products such as Omniback, HiComp's HiBack, Legato and Veritas programs, all allow parallel tape backup whereby multiple tape drives can send the data files in parallel to multiple drives and decreasing the total backup time. This is done with multiple tape drives.

So choose your backup method using the percentage method, like insurance. If your data is worth one million dollars (the cost to replace the data if it cannot be recovered), then 1% is probably a reasonable protection factor to spend on insuring the data ($10,000). While this may seem high, 'hoping' the data is backed up reliably is *not* a way to guarentee a long future in sysadmin. On the other hand, if the data is not important, classic Unix tools will work most of the time.

[Brad Marks]

I'm running HP-UX 10.20 on a K-420 and use a backup product called 'Edge' by Microlite Corp. (www.microliet.com). It is scriptable or can be kicked off by cron. Haven't had one bit of a problem in 3+ years.
Good Luck...

[Anthony Goonetilleke]

try "amanda" it is free and it works really well. You can get it at www.amanda.org

[Carol Balla]

Bill Hassell:
Thanks so much for your comments on backup, I sent that directly to my boss and above. That was my point exactly.
Carol

[Tom Danzig]

Bill,

Your statement

".. the Ignite tape is not usable as a selective recovery method, ie, recovering a single file is not possible."

is not entirely correct. Individual files can be restored. They're archived using pax and can be restored with same or tar. I've done it before and it can be very valuable at times.

[Tim Malnati]

For Tom:

Although it is possible to recover an individual file with Ignite, it is certainly not what the utility is designed for. In a previous shop, some people thought it might be a good idea to eliminate system level backups (with fbackup) for vg00 where Ignite was being periodically performed as well. The vast amount of failures involve some sort of human error with either corrupting or deleting a file or group of files. Fbackup and the other backup third party solutions mentioned are far more adept at doing this in a lot less time.

For Carol:

Many shops are using backup startegies that are more global in scope. They are using both hardware (tape towers, etc) and software that encompases all of their servers into a more heterogenious methodology. This streamlines things for all groups involved and usually saves money from the hardware end too. It is great for data level backups. It is not a complete replacement for system level backups, but fbackup and the existing internal tape drives are more than adequate for the system level. Duplicating some key files into the daily data backup (like /etc) will reduce the need of doing system level stuff on a daily basis.

[Victor BERRIDGE]

If you have all sorts of servers to backup, like HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, DEC-UX, SCo, novell, NT
Then you could look at Tivoli/adsm, it works quite well...

Regards
Victor