Full Bootable Environment on Magnetic Media.

[Mirza Rizwan Ahmed]

I have Alpha Server 2000 4/233 machine and I am using OpenVMS 6.2. I would like to know that how I can build full bootable enviroment on Tape Drive; therefore I can boot the machine in emergency from Tape drive. Or I can use this bootable tape to make Image back/restoration in case of desaster (just like standalone back in VAX).

Looking forward Tech guidance.
Rizwan Ahmed

[Volker Halle]

Rizwan Ahmed,

on OpenVMS Alpha you boot from your OpenVMS Alpha Operating System CD, if you need to do backup or restore of the system disk in an emergency.

The OpenVMS Alpha Operating System CD contains a menu to allow you to do tasks like upgrade, install etc. and allows you to issue any DCL commands.

Volker.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

If you have a spare disk on the 2000 you can keep an image backup of the system disk on that. You can then boot from this and restore the tapes (including the last copy of the system disk, if needed).

The advantage is that you can even do network restores via other nodes with tape drives (restore on remote disk and use the save set on that disk as input for your restore, node::xx.sav/sav).

Wim

[John Gillings]

Rizwan Ahmed,

To answer your specific question - no, you can't do this. There is no support in the console for booting an Alpha system from tape (neither is there for Integrity systems). This is a hardware architectural design decision. Done deal, won't ever be changed.

Tape was the only viable option before CD drives and easily swapped disk drive canisters. Now that the newer technology is ubiquitous, nobody need endure the pain of a boot from tape ever again.

As Volker pointed out, the emergency boot environment for Alpha is from CD. Any OpenVMS Operating System CD can be booted to "standalone DCL" - which is a HUGE improvement over standalone backup.

Even on your VAX, I'd strongly recommend you put the standalone backup boot tape in the "only to be opened in dire emergencies if everything else has failed" drawer, and boot standalone DCL from a VAX Operating System CD as your emergency boot environment, just boot from root 1 instead of root 0.

As Wim has pointed out, it's even better to build an emergency boot environment on a spare disk. Much faster to boot. Use

$ @SYS$SYSTEM:AXPVMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN

(on Integrity, build your emergency boot environment on a USB thumb drive and carry it with you).