Disaster Recovery Steps

[Fateh Malik]

Hi All,

If I have rp4440 with two 73GB hard disk mirrored, connected to external storedge EMC is configured by using LVM e.g vg01, vg02 & vg03.

May I know the steps to be taken for taking Filesystem backup/recovery having above mentioned configuration.

For Example if i have fully crashed systems , & have to start scracth, due to this what sort of backup I should have so that i can recover data.

Thanking you all in advance

Regards,
Fateh

[RobinKing]

I'd start with a make_tape_recovery, including all of vg00.
Presumably you have DR provisions in place for the SAN?

[Bill Hassell]

Create regular disaster recovery tapes using this command:

make_tape_recovery -I -v -x inc_entire=vg00 -a /dev/rmt/xyz

Separately, you would use fbackup in conjunction with this config file to backup data from the external EMC storage:

blocksperrecord 4096
records 64
checkpointfreq 4096
readerprocesses 6
maxretries 5
retrylimit 5000000
maxvoluses 200
filesperfsm 2000

The config file is specified with -c option to fbackup. Typically, the file is created as /etc/fbackup.conf

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

Example for a complete backup starting at / (root):

fbackup -i / -v -c /etc/fbackup.conf -f /dev/rmt/0m

Display the tape header with dates:

frecover -V - -f /dev/rmt/0m

Display the table of contents:

frecover -I - -f /dev/rmt/0m

Then use frecover to restore individual files and directories as required.

[Fateh Malik]

Hi Robin,

Thanks for the reply,

Since I am very much new in HP UX, may I know the step by step procedure having above mentioned setup.

Thanks
BR
fateh

[Denver Osborn]

You can find links to Ignite-UX documents and FAQ and product download here.

http://software.hp.com/products/IUX

If you don't have a tape drive attached to this server, then make_tape_recovery won't be of much use. The other option provided by Ignite is to create a recovery image that is written to an nfs mount.

Use swlist to see if Ignite is installed already.

swlist Ignite-UX


If it's not installed, you can find the depot download from the above url. Install instructions are provided with the download page.

Also refer to manual pages for additional info

man make_tape_recovery
man make_net_recovery


-denver

[RobinKing]

Bill beat me to it...

[Fateh Malik]

Hi Bill,
Pls dont beat robin.

Thanks
Regards,
Fateh

[Andrew Young_2]

Hi Fateh

In addition to this, and depending on what backup solution you have, I would recommend that if you are using Data Protector, or equivalant, that your backup database also be backed up, seperately, especially if the cell server is one of these two servers. It will save considerable time when having to work out which tapes you need to restore from, and save you the effort in having to import each tape from scratch.

Lastly I would also recommend a treeware (paper) description of your system should a recovery need to be made where a make_recovery tape is not available (a recovery tape snapped during a recovery comes painfully to mind) or it won't be compatible because of some hardware change. Ideally this should include lvol descriptions, sizes and mount points, kernel parameters, any special depots you may need, and any special accounts and groups, there are probably a few other issues that may be required, especially for service guard. Often just a printout of various configuration files is all that is needed. Also having CD/DVD versions of any media required would help.

Lastly if possible practice a DR.

Regards

Andrew Y

[RobinKing]

Download cfg2html if you haven't already and run it on the systems in question. It's a very useful tool for providing the information Andrew has suggested collecting.

http://come.to/cfg2html