backups

[Jay Cantwell]

I am looking for a way to put my backups to a disk drive on another machine. I have a K system and a D system. Currently I am using Omniback to put them to tape. However, the tapes are good for recovering data only to a point. That point being that if I a catastrophy on Thursday and the current tape being used started on Saturday, then the latest data I can recover is the previous Thursday. Is there anything out there that will let me backup to a hard drive on another machine rather than a tape drive???

I am just trying to a little proactive...

thanks...Jay

[Edward Alfert_2]

I do complete system backup to tape every day using cpio and then also use rcp to backup database and other critical files to another server (just in case the tape is back and the backup doesn't work... it has been known to happen)

here is my cron entries:

0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/ais /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/bi /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/db /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/home /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/payroll /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/rd /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/reports /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1
0 4 * * 2-6 rcp -r root@aistrend:/tw32 /trend/ > /dev/null 2>&1

[Herve BRANGIER]

Hi

I think you can use Ignite to do that. Have a
look at make_net_recovery (1M) :

"The make_net_recovery tool creates a system
recovery archive and stores the archive on the
network. The archive created by make_net_recovery
is specific to the system it was created for
and its identity includes hostname,ip_address,
networking information, etc.
In the event of a root disk failure, the
recovery archive can be installed via Ignite-UX
to restore the system."

HTH

Herv?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Jay:

One easy choice would be 'rcp'.

Regards!

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Jay:

I guess I don't quite understand your problem. It appears that you have the same issues saving to disk as you do to tape. You can rather easily setup a pileline something like this:

fbackup -f - ... | compress -c | remsh remote_host uncompress -c | dd of=/xxx

For that matter OB2 can also write to a file but it would need to be an NFS mounted file if you wanted a remote file.

I think your most foolproof method is to do a weekly OB2 full backup to tape with daily incrementals and then as part of your postexec do an omnimcopy of that backup to create a copy for offsite storage. That way, you have an on-site copy for immediate restores and an offsite copy for disaster.

My 3 cents, Clay

[Jay Cantwell]

Can I rcp to a NT box or must it be to a unix
box...I thought of rcp, but was not sure I could use it...thanks

[Edward Alfert_2]

according to microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/) rcp will NOT work from unix to nt by default...

-----------------------------------------------
The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Server version 3.1
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 3.1
Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.5 , 3.51 , 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5 , 3.51 , 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

-----------------------------------------------

SYMPTOMS
When a UNIX system tries to Remote Copy (RCP) or Remote Execute (REXEC) with a Windows NT system, the connection is refused. If you run the command GUEST@OLYMPUS 7 :/USR/GUEST>RCP TEST INDURAIN:TEST from SCO UNIX, the following error message is generated:

rcmd: connect: indurain.microsoft.com: Connection refused

A similar error message is returned for REXEC. In addition, if you enter a local host name and a local user name using RCP (see example below), a similar error message appears. The local host name and the local user names are not required.

Example of RCP Command:

rcp .:
.:

-or-

rcp .:
.:

CAUSE
Windows NT does not have the server portion of the Remote Copy and Remote Execute commands (usually, rshd and rexecd, respectively); therefore, the connection is refused.

STATUS
This behavior is by design.

--------------------------

you can try NFS to access windows machines from HP-UX.

[Edward Alfert_2]

Since windows doesn't come with an rcp server (only rcp client) then I did a quick search on the web and found several RCP servers for NT.

One that looked particularly good costs only $45.
RSHD/NT
http://www.denicomp.com/rshdnt.htm

If you want to use with a 95/98/ME system, then use
http://www.denicomp.com/rshd95.htm

I'm sure these will work, but if you want to look for others, there are others.

enjoy...

[Richard Darling]

Jay, a free and easy way is to ftp the files from your UNIX system to your NT system.
Richard

[Bill Thorsteinson]

I have done daily backups to another system using
an NFS mount. Use tar or whatever else you choose
to backup to a file on the NFS mount.

If you are backing up Oracle redo log files consider
mounting a drive on the second system and setting
the log writer up to write two copies one to the
remote system and the other to the local system.
A similar approach should work for other databases.

[Frank Slootweg]

Can you please explain why OmniBack can not solve your problem? As others have mentioned, backup to disk, whether remote or local, is not really different from backup to tape. Also, in contrast to what another poster mentioned, IIRC, OmniBack can backup to a remote file device, i.e. a file device on a remote machine, i.e. NFS is not needed if the remote system is an OmniBack-supported platform.

NOT that I advise it in any way, but while you can indeed not rcp(1) *to* a Windows NT system (with standard NT software), you can rcp *from* an NT system. Since you can schedule a job on an NT system, you can 'pull' the backup to the NT system. If needed, you can 'even' run rsh(1) on the NT system to prepare the data on the HP-UX system. I use this to 'pull' certain HP-UX files to my NT 'workstation'. NT 'even' has pax(1) so you can use cpio(1)/tar(1)/pax(1) on HP-UX and unpack the archive on NT.

[Santosh Nair_1]

Jay,

As an alternative to NFS, why not use samba and mount the drives to be backed up from the Unix side on the NT machine. This way the drive just appears like any other NT share.

-Santosh