tape backup software

[Mark Vollmers]

I've just got a general question. I have a new tape drive (dds-3) and am looking for some software. I currently have a fbackup script, but I want something that will give me logs and allow for excluding folders, easy recovery, etc. Does anyone have any suggestions on what's good out there? I'd appreciate knowing what others are using, since I have no idea what to use. Thanks!

[Marc Dijkstra · Accepted solution]

Hewlett Packard Openview Omniback 2 is one of the better backup packages. Nice intuitive front end and easy setup.

Check out http://openview.hp.com and have a look at Omniback 11 v3.5

MND

[Marcel Boon]

Hi Mark,

If you use fbackup / frecover on the right way,
there are log files and you can exclude files and dirs. The easist way is to use SAM.

Marcel

fbackup is a good tool

[Marcel Boon]

Hi again,

For other solutions look at:

http://www.docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90701/B2355-90701_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90701/00/00/51-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90701/00/00/51-toc.html&searchterms=fbackup&queryid=20010306-062121

Marcel

[Marc Dijkstra]

I agree with Marcel, for a single system and DDS fbackup is great, Omniback should only really be considered for multiple servers on a network.

Also fbackup/frecover is free ;)

MND

[Mark Mitchell]

How much data are you backing up?

[Mark Vollmers]

the drive is on a D-class server. There are some nfs mounted folders on the drive, but I am not going out to other workstations. I ran it yesterday and it all fit on one tape (dds-3 24GB tape) The amount of data is around 12.5 GB, with 15,000 files or so.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Mark:

'fbackup' can be configured to do incremental or full backups. A simple 'graph' file containing entries for including and/or excluding filesystems, directories and/or files constitutes the selection process for the backup.

Thus, graph files for backup or recovery have simple entries like:

i /var
e /var/tmp

which would request a backup on the /var directory, but exclude the /var/tmp subdirectory.

fbackup is designed to work while files are inuse. It attempts to insure a good copy of a file is placed on tape by comparing the timestamp of the file at the end of the copy to the timestamp of the file seen at the beginning of the copy. If these do not match, fbackup marks the file as "bad" and retries the copy. The retry (maxretries) default is five (5).

One great benefit to fbackup is 'frecover' for recovering something that was backed up. frecover uses graph and configuration files just like fbackup. frecover can produce an index (directory) and a volume header listing of the fbackup tape. Due to the way fbackup writes tapes, frecover can rapidly search the tape to find files in the middle and reload them.

If you run your fbackup with the (v)erbose option (-v) and redirect the output to a log file, you will be able to create log files and to search for warnings and errors. Thus, something like:

fbackup... > /tmp/fbackup.log 2>&1

The default configuration file for fbackup gives rather poor performance. I would start with something like this:

blocksperrecord 128
records 32
checkpointfreq 256
readerprocesses 2
maxretries 5
retrylimit 50000000
maxvoluses 100
filesperfsm 200

Do a man on 'fbackup' and 'frecover' for more information overview. There are also additional documents on tuning in the Knowledge Base.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Mark Mitchell]

then a quick an cheap way to get the job done might be a little script. I have on one of my small servers a cron job that fires off a script that backs up data with cpio. Wheather you create a tapelist or just output it to
the device /dev/rmt/0m. Then with each line I add | tee -a /usr/tmp/backup. That will keep a record of the process.

TO TAPE
find /usr/tmp/rptlog -print|cpio -ocdumvB > /dev/rmt/0m

[Mark Vollmers]

Thanks, everyone, for your responses. I guess I'll go play with SAM for a while and get the fbackup working. Thanks!