Ignite incremental backup possible ?

[Thomas Pohlen]

Hi all,

is an incremental backup like in fbackup possible with make_recovery ?

Thanks in advance

[Darrell Allen · Accepted solution]

Hi,

No, Ignite is designed for making a bootable image of your system. It's primary purpose is for DR. You need to use it regularly for that purpose in addition to using fbackup or another more full-featured backup solution (Omniback, Veritas Netbackup, etc).

Darrell

[Thomas Pohlen]

Thats what i thought.

Whats DR please ?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Thomas:

No, Ignite 'make_recovery' and the replacement 'make_tape_recovery' use 'pax' to create the tape archive and no incremental selection is possible.

Remember that Ignite recovery tapes are designed to recovery your core OS (vg00). The backup and recovery of non-vg00 filesystems is intended to occur with other means.

I should point out, however, that by using the 'make_tape_recovery' options, you *can* include and exclude files and directories; and you *can* elect to include all filesystems on a specified volume group. While none of these options is an "incremental" one in the sense of an "incremental" backup, it does point up additional flexibilty.

Depending on the size of your vg00, an Ignite recovery tape can be make in 30-45 minutes. This is sufficiently fast and so easy that it simply pays to make one with regularity as necessary (new patches, configuration changes, etc.).

Regards!

...JRF...

[Patrick Wallek]

DR = Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery can mean many things. Some of the more basic are if your machine crashes and is not bootable. You lose major hardware, like ALL OS disks. Anything that renders your machine unusable unless you re-install the OS. The make_tape_recovery tape allows you to reinstall EVERYTHING from vg00 as it was when you made the tape.

Some more major disasters -- fire in your data center or something else where your entire data center is unusable. If you have a DR plan and an offsite location with machines you can recover to, then you can use your make_tape_recovery tape to install the offsite machine so that it looks like your original as much as possible. Once that's done you hopefully have your other backup tapes that you restore the rest of your data from.

Just in case you need an example, here's the Ignite/UX make_tape_recovery command I use:

/opt/ignite/bin/make_tape_recovery -a /dev/rmt/0mn -I -v -x inc_entire=vg00

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Thomas:

"DR" = Disaster Recovery.

DR can mean recovering your server when, for instance, some nebulous corruption has occured and it is easier to restore the OS than to troubleshoot and fix the root cause (bad patches, stupid mistakes, unknown, etc.).

DR can also mean recoverying your server and its data at a remote facility when yours has suffered a true disaster (fire, flood, building collapse).

In the first case, you may only need to recover your OS (vg00) and simply 'vgimport' your non-vg00 volume groups to regain your data. In the second case, you would most certainly need to recreate and recover (from backup) your non-vg00 data.

A true, full DR plan is a "work-in-progress" and demands testing and constant refinement.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Darrell Allen]

Hi again,

As others said, after I went out to lunch, DR stands for Disaster Recovery. Sorry for the abbreviation. Sometimes it's easy to presume the abbreviations are known.

James and Patrick have provided good information in their answers which should help your understanding and that of others who will read this later. Even though you've assigned points to my answer (thank you), would you be so kind as to rate their posts as well? It will help those others to know that their responses were helpful.

Thanks,
Darrell

[Wodisch]

Hello,

for DR, create and keep a documentation of your H/W instances, e.g.

ioscan -fnk > /var/adm/ioscan.list
vgdisplay -v > /var/adm/vgdisplay.list

You will need this in case you have to restore that tape to a different box, to keep all your mount-points working...

Just my $0.02,
Wodisch