fbackup vs. cpio for system backup

[Randy Hagedorn]

We are a realitivly new HP-UX shop and would like some advise as to what to use for a good and sound system backup solution. fbackup or cpio? We are set-up to use fbackup from advise from a consultant.

Recently, we've read about cpio, and are now wondering if we should change to cpio.

Some suggestions from the 'real' world would be appreciated. So, which is the most practical 'fbackup' or 'cpio' or some other backup solution???

Thanks in advance =-) Dewy

[harry d brown jr · Accepted solution]

On hp, fbackup versus cpio, I'd choose fbackup, unless I wanted to be able to "port" any of the contents to another NON-HP box. fbackup has way many more features than cpio.

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Kuenze,
If you are going to restore that data at anytime on HP only then best choice is fbackup.

Sachin

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The answer is that it depends. Fbackup/frestore are non-standard HP only utilities. If you are only going to need to backup and restore to HP-UX then fbackup is a good answer. Because it is multi-threaded, it is much faster than cpio. You also have the ability to easily backup across the network using fbackup; you can also do this with cpio or tar but it is much more difficult. My answer would be, if you only need to do HP-UX backups and restores then fbackup is your best bet.

Fbackup also makes it easy to do incremental backups.

One other product that you might give some consideration to is Omniback. It's not free but it makes automating backups especially with tape libraries very easy. It can backup your UNIX servers, Windows boxes, Novell, ... all to a central library if you like or tape drives on individual machines located anywhere on your network.

Food for thought, Clay

[Bernie Vande Griend]

For normal system backups, (if you don't want to buy a 3rd-party backup utility) then use fbackup. It is suited for backing up filesytems better than cpio and it also can do incremental backups as well as full backups which cpio can not do (without a lot of scripting).
As was said above, if you intend to restore the files on a non-HP system, then fbackup is not an option and you should use cpio or tar.
Also, if you need to backup databases or other non-filesytem structures, you'll need to use a 3rd party software such as Legatto, NetBackup, etc.

[Darrell Allen]

Hi DuWayne,

Strickly for backup and recoveries of files on your servers: fbackup over cpio.

Diaster recovery of your servers: Ignite (free from HP). This is a must because it makes a bootable, re-installable backup of your system in it's present state (kernel, patches, startup scripts, etc).

For more performant / robust backups and recoveries: HP's Omniback or a number of products from other vendors (Legato Networker, Veritas Netbackup, Reel backup).

Darrell

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

I use 'fbackup'/'frecover' for routine backups on HP servers for a couple of reasons. First, 'fbackup' supports backups of inuse files. The timestamp of a file is noted at the time the 'fbackup' process begins. Once the file has been written to tape a comparison of the original timestamp with the current value on disk is made. If the file is seen to have changed, a warning is issued, the file on tape marked as "bad", and another attempt is made to backup. The control of the number of attempts is defined in a configuration file -- the parameter is 'maxretries'. It has a default value of five.

Another very useful feature of 'fbackup'/'frecover' is the ability to construct "graphs" whereby you can include whole directories for backup while excluding individual subdirectories and/or files.

The recovery of files from an 'fbackup' tape with 'frecover' can similarly be driven from graphs.

'cpio' is ideal for moving whole filesystems as when you wish to change mountpoints. Obviously, it is also a Unix standard (like 'tar') and as such is necessary when you need to port files among the different Unix flavors.

Take a look at the man pages for 'fbackup' and 'frecover'. There is a wealth of information to see.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Steve Post]

Everybody here says to use fbackup....except me. I never used it. I look in my UNIX books and note fbackup is NOT listed. I've been using cpio for years because, when I switch jobs, I end up working on a SCO box, or Sun Sparc, or HPUX, or whatever.

I guess these folks are right about using fbackup, IF you stay with HPUX.

But I would learn to backup and restore with cpio and tar too. There is a lot of 3rd party software that arrives on tape in cpio or tar format. And someday you may have to move your data to a non-HPUX computer using a 4mm tape drive.

If you go to load a perl module (from cpan.org), you'll see everything is stored in "tarballs." That's gzipped, and tar'd files.

For the site here, we use Omniback for most of the backups (with a 48 slot DLT tape library). I use ignite for bootable tapes of each system. And I use cpio if I need to move stuff to a 4mm tape.
My real recommendation is learn cpio and tar just in case. But you don't have to use it.

Steve ^_^

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

Hi,

HPSHOP..?? FBACKUP is the answer...! No cpio, no tar no dd.!
Easy to administrate and faster during restore

Good luck
-USA...

[Bernie Vande Griend]

Steve,
I think you missed the point of his question.
He was looked for a utility to do the same functions that you use Omniback for. If you are doing daily/weekly/monthly backups of your system for the intent of restoring data on that same system, fbackup is much more appropriate than tar/cpio/dd.
However, your point is correct that any admin worth his salt should know how to use tar, cpio, dd as they will be needed in many situations where fbackup is appropriate. And since you use fbackup, it is probably that you have no need for fbackup.
Hope this helps clear it up a bit.

[Steve Post]

Yeah. I know what you meant. Since I already use omniback, I never used fbackup. Also since I've used cpio for years, I never had any need to use some special program that can only be used on UNIX OS .

But I see from the large response that I should take a look at fbackup.

thanks. Steve