Recommend anything better then fbackup?

[Jenifer Martins]

I am a "NEW" sys. admin of two 9000 servers. I have learned quit a bit in the past 3 months. One thing I learned is... I don't like fbackup. Our server holds "Millions"of small files within 150 "folders".

Now that I now that fbackup doesn't allow you to backup additional graphs to the same tape because it rewinds, I have another issue. Because I back up so many files, if I use one graph, I run out of Virtual Memory (so it says). Why is this? Do I need to make the graphs smaller? Any suggests on how to back up a large amount of small files? What other software can I use on HPUX 10.20 with an DLT autoloader that would work perfect?

[Michael Tully]

Hi Jenifer,

I read your post from yesterday and see your
current dilemma. There are a couple of ways
you can go. One of the systems we use here
has an autoloader which we use 'cpio' so that
we can backup filesystems to one tape and use
the autoloader to load a different tape later
for ontape backups through informix. We also
have other systems that we are deploying a
HP product called Omniback. This is really
flexible as you can run backup after backup
and Omniback will exchange the tapes from
within your autoloader for you. There are a
couple of gotchas setting it up with defining
the correct device and drivers for the robotics
but once this is done, it a very flexible tool.

Food for thought :-))

Michael

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

There are a number of 3rd party backup product. Some I have used, some I haven't.

Legato Networker
CA Sams:Alexandria
Budtool
HP Omniback
Veritas Netbackup

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Jenifer:

Remember that your graph can (include) a directory *and* (e)xclude both subdirectories and/or files 'beneath' it. If you are not doing this, this may provide considerable benefit.

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Jenifer,

My choice for your situation would be OmniBack or Veritas Netbackup. Given the cost difference, OB2 would be my pick. Surprisingly,
compared to the other freebies supplied with various flavors of UNIX (e.g. tar, dump, cpio)
fbackup is quite good. I think you will be rather pleased with OB2.

My 2 cents, Clay

[boley janowski]

Jennifer,

There are alot of third party products out there and they all have good and bad. Depending on the total amount of data and time frame you have to both backup and recover, this will way heavily on your decision. We are currently making our final decision and will most likely go with veritas as our solution.

I would suggest making a few inquires to the different solutions out there, let them know what you want and see if they are interested in coming out to talk to you and provide a demo. Be aware the hardware often required for some of these solutions are allot of money not to mention the software. So ask allot of question and dont settle for one price from a vendor shop them against each other if that is the way you go.

Finally, there are various forms of backing up for free from command line, hp has a dump, cpio, tar, fbackup, ect..

Good luck, research some different solutions and ask the forum about them I'm sure you will be overwelmed by the responses.

[Michael Lampi]

One thing that can be done to fit more small files on a tape is to tar the many small files into a single larger file. Take this file and "gzip -9" (or bzip) it, which should generally compress the large file considerably. Use whatever utility you prefer, even fbackup, to copy the compressed file to tape.

You will find that the compression offered by gzip to be significantly better than that offered by the hardware compression on the tape drive.

This can be repeated for large chunks of files that you wish to back up.

The reduced overhead of a few large files to be transferred to tape will enable you to store more data on a single tape than previously.

You can also more readily determine if a backup will accept all the data you are trying to place in it.

This method requires a fair amount of scratch space (enough to fill a tape). If your network is reasonably fast (100Mbit) then you can spread the temporary compressed files around to other nodes.

Anyway, this is a reasonably effective poor man's way to get the most of one's hardware and included software.

The final copy to tape from the scratch files is really quick!

[James Kimble]

Jenifer,
I've used OmniBackII for a number of years. Currently using OBII ver a.03.50 on HPUX11 with a hp surestore-e 2/20 tape library (2 DLT drives, 20 tape slots). Works very nicely. In this configuration, you can physically connect 1 tape drive from the library to each server. OmniBack controls the tape changes, so you can back-up both servers concurrently. It takes approximately 45 minutes to back up each server, including out online databases. Additionally, incremental backups can be appended to the same tape as the full backup.

[Alexander Pino, Sr.]

Jennifer:

I can undertand the position that your are in. I'm a newly appointed "Sys. Admin" as well. The guys above are absolutely correct. OmniBack-II is the way to go. We started using OmniBack-II (v. 3.5) about 8 months ago, primarily for Disaster Recovery, and it is terrific. Is it "perfect"? What is?...lol.

Want more information on OmniBack? Click here:
http://openview.hp.com/products/omnibackmixed/system

Best of luck!

Alex.