Full backup and restore linux of Itanium server

[Vladimir Fabecic]

Hello
Need to make a project for disaster recovery of two Itanium servers (in Red Hat cluster).
One node have SDLT tape drive connected.
Solution has to be with open source tools (Data Protector can be option next year, not now).
So please give your experience and suggestions about that.
Thanks

[Frank de Vries]

We use Dataprotector right now,
but in the past used all sorts of tools
http://www.informit.com/library/content.aspx?b=red_hat_linux7&seqNum=219

like cpio and rhbackup which is a backup utility that can be used for local and remote backups. This should be considered alpha quality software and should be used with care. (from rpm description)
http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/rhbackup.html

easy come, easy go ...

[smatador]

Hi,
I suggest you this url
http://www.linux-backup.net/App/
You could check also dump/restore command to made incremental or full backup, combine with gzip, have multiple backup volume etc.
dump is a simple command but very functional. For example,
#dump -0uf - /dev/sda4 | gzip --fast -c >> /dev/nst0
Hope it helps.

[Vladimir Fabecic]

Did you ever try to test full restore?

About dump,
I use vdump backup in TRU64 and it works perfect. Not sure if linux dump utility works perfect with ext3.

[smatador]

Hi,
dump works only with ext2/ext3 type filesystems, not for reizer... but on RH it's ok.
In the past, Linus Torvalds wrote that dump is a stupid program
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/admin-primer/s1-disaster-rhlspec.html
The more difficult with dump is to restore a full filesystem if your dump backups were made of staggered incremental dump levels, but it's the same that vdump, look at the
http://surf.ap.seikei.ac.jp/~nakano/dump-restore/dump-restore-mini-HOWTO.en.html
on the writtening about dump, it's call "Tower of Hanoi sequence"
For backup tool, you could also look for amanda.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Ghost won't work on this platform.

http://mondorescue.org is open source, and you may find a IA64 version or can compile it.

I have done this many times on wintel, have not had the pleasure of working with Linux on Itanium.

SEP

[Vladimir Fabecic]

Will try to test dump (maybe next week) and restore.
This is good because I need just installation media (and tape, of course).

But did anyone do a restore of linux on itanium server (from any kind of backup "media")?