make_tape_recovery

[William Earley]

Can make_tape_recovery write to a tape drive on another server. The internal tape drive on my rp8400 gets jammed. I swapped it out, the new one jammed. Only scsi connection is on the MP and I dont have a cable long enough to reach it from my only external DDS. I will keep playing with the internal drive but if I could write to a tape drive on another server that might do it for me for now with our DR exercise looming.

[Rita C Workman · Accepted solution]

I believe the answer is no.

Is the server connected or zoned to a tape library (SDLT or LTO). You might be able to use a fresh tape and backup to a drive on that.
But not sure how this will work with your DR exercise.

Another thought is to get a portable external tape unit and keep it on hand for just these occassions. Might be worth the expense.

Rgrds,
Rita

[Pete Randall]

Rita (of course) is quite correct. The man page states "make_tape_recovery creates a system recovery archive and stores thearchive on a local tape". It is possible that newer versions of make_tape_recovery or HP-UX itself (this was 11.11) might be different, but I don't recall ever hearing that remote tape drives would work.


Pete

[Shibin_2]

One way it is possible.

If your second server has a SCSI adapter the easiest way is to disconnect form one server and connect to the other (as well as those two server are physically near each other).

Btw, why can't you use make_net_recovery ?

Read this thread, some hints you can find.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1380682

[William Earley]

This is an 11.11 system
I am doing make_net_recovery every weekend
and that is working but then at the DR I have to be able to build my ignite server (a 11.31 system on an rp3440) and that was an iffy deal last year as they didn't give us an rp3440 to work with. Finally they gave us an rp7420 and we got that to work. So, it would be a lot easier to be able to ignite from tape the only HP server I will need (if I dont need data protector, which is also on the 11.31 system).

[William Earley]

I will go in now and check if I have a mini-scsi cable for my external DDS3 tape drive and if I do I will pull out my external tape drive and make it portable.

[William Earley]

the only scsi connection I have on the rp8400 is on the MP board and I dont think I can see that with ioscan so I guess I will have to unplug the C5683A DDS4 tape drive, eject the tape it has and try again. I just need one good ignite tape and Ive just made some filesystem changes to vg00 so I really need a new ignite tape. It makes DR so much easier.

[William Earley]

Shibin suggested a thread that explains how to write a make_net_recovery file to a bootable tape. I have to get a script named: make_media_install
Im will try this approach this afternoon, gotta work tickets & do reports now. thanks

[Pete Randall]

make_media_install should be provided as part of the Ignite package. Check and see if you have it already. If not, download the latest Ignite version.


Pete