VMS Stand-Alone Backup

[Greg Howard]

I'm new to VMS and need to document how to restore a VMS system from tape for a diaaster recovery. How can I create a backup tape set that will let me rebiuld the system if it crashes and how would I boot from that tape if the system disk is gone? We have 2 VAX machines in a cluster running VMS 5.5-2H4. We have another single VAX running 5.5-2. We also have a Compaq Alpha machine running OpenVMS 7.3 Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jeff Wolfe_1]

Iâ ve been away from VAX VMS for so long, I canâ t help you there. For Alpha itâ s fairly easy. Boot into the OpenVms installation CD. Once booted, one of the options is to perform a backup. (This may also be available for VAX). Just follow the prompts. The only problem is that system is down. You can do a quasi hot backup. We use a 3-member shadowed system disk. Using the mini-merge feature we dismount one of the members, back it up and then re-add the member back. The whole process completes in under an hour. With a 3-member system disk there is no exposure. It will also work with a 2-member set. But during the backup you are at risk.

Here are the commands we use:

$ DISM/POLICY=MINICOPY $10$DKA502:
$ MOUNT/OVER=ID/NOWRITE $10$DKA502:
$ BACKUP/IMAGE/LOG/LABEL=SYSBCK $10$DKA502: AIT1:VMS731.BCK/SAVE/MEDIA=COMP/BLOCK=32256
$ DISMOUNT $10$DKA502:
$ MOUNT/SYS/POLICY=MINICOPY=OPTIONAL DSA200: /SHADOW=$10$DKA502: DILBRT_SYS DI

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

For OpenVMS Alpha there is no stand alone backup, you boot from the OS CD and restore your system disk from backup. To speed up the whole process consider having a copy of the system disk around on a storage works disk in a save place .

I am not sure if you could boot VAX/VMS 5.5 already from CD, but doubt it. If not the, IIRC you want to have a look at stabackit.com . Again for speed purposes of normal backup operations(not DR), you might want to build a SA backup root on disk too. The OpenVMS installation manual for your version should have all of the relevant details.

[Dale A. Marcy]

The model(s) of VAX and Alpha have not been specified and on the VAX could possibly determine whether or not the system is capable of being booted via CD. I know back when I maintained 5.5-2 systems, we created Standalone Backup tapes by executing STABKIT.COM. I think it was in Sys$System:, but do not remember. The tape created from that process could be used to boot the VAX up to a point where a restore could be performed. On newer VMS operating systems, you boot the system from the Operating System distribution CD and select the option to perform DCL commands. At that point, a backup command may be entered to restore the tape to disk.

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

I agree with Jeff on his procedure, but I want to add some remarks since we have doing disaster recovery tests for all of our systems.
First you have to get a good backup of your system disk, and this is by shutdowning your system abd boot from a floppy and then choose option 7 "execute DCL Commands" and issue the following commands:
$$$ init tape_drive: SYSTEM
$$$ mount/for tape_drive
$$$ mount/ov=id your_system_disk
$$$ backup/image/log your_system_disk: tape_drive:SYSTEM.sav/sav

This will get an image copy of your system disk to a tape save set
Then to restore this to a new_system_disk, just reverse the process
boot from the operating system CD and execute the following:
$$$ init new_system_disk: SYSTEM (it doesn't matter as you are doing an image restore)
$$$ mount/for new_system_disk:
$$$ backup/image/log tape_drive:SYSTEM.sav/sav new_system_disk:

Hope this helps

Mohamed

[Jeff Wolfe_1]

The documentation states that the backup we are getting by dropping a shadow set member is equivalent to the system post crash. As Mohamed states, getting a totally clean backup is a good thing. I will add that I have had numerous VMS crashes during my many years using the OS and have never had a system disk corrupted after a crash. (Yea, I know. Next crash will be the one.)

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Well the reason of a real DR excercise is a scenario where your primary location becomes unavailable because of a disaster. Therefore the question if a system disk can become corrupt during "normal" operations is largely irrelevant. If your HW is "fried" because of a fire the OS can be as stable as a rock, but you still will need to restore from tape/spare disk (which need to be off-site to be prepared for this).

[Åge Rønning]

Since the V5.5-2 CDs is not bootable I suggest you build Standalone backup kit on one or more user disks in addition to the system disk. You can also build stabackit on tape, But booting from disk is much faster.

@sys$update:stabackit <>

would make the disk bootable for backup(just takes a few MBs). If you build this on the current system disk it will build the kit on SYSE(have to boot B/E0000000), if build on user disks it will put it in SYS0.

Remember that BACKUP is the only valid command in this old standalone backup mode while todays CD boot provide all VMS commands.

Also remember to test and document this before the disaster strikes!

[Ian Miller.]

You can boot VAX/VMS V5.5-2 from CD or tape. To create the tape use SYS$UPDATE:STABACKIT MKA400 or whatever your tape is called.
If I recall correctly you can't boot from DAT but can from DLT so make the tape on a TK50/70, DLTIII/DLTIV.
I have Digital Manufactured VAX/VMS V5.5-2 CD which if booted give a DCL $ prompt at which standalone BACKUP can be performed. As previously mentioned you should also add a standalobe backup kit on your system disk (for performing standalone backups of your current system) and also on another disk (its a lot quicker booting from a local disk than from tape or CD).

[John Gillings]

I'm not sure if it's ever been documented, but it IS possible to boot an Alpha style stand alone DCL on VAX. Take any VAX Operating System CD V6.1 or higher and boot with:

>>> B/10000000 device

(use whatever the your console equivalent for specifying boot flags of 10000000)

There's a catch though... the system will show the date and time in the year that the CD was created and ask you if it's correct. No matter what, ALWAYS ACCEPT whatever date you're offerred. If it's important you can SET TIME once you're at the $$$ prompt. If you try to change the time during STARTUP, the SET TIME command will fail because the new time can't be written back to the CD, and STARTUP.COM goes into an infinite loop.
(I think this bug was fixed, maybe in V7.3?)

Remember that for restoring a system, it doesn't matter what version CD you boot. Bits are bits. So, for example, you can quite happily restore a V5.5-2 image with a V7.2 standalone DCL.

Also note that booting from CD is not fast. Depending on your CD drive, it might take 20 minutes.

[Willem Grooters]

Back to your original question:
I haven't been working with VAX quite a long time but I'm quite sure this still stands.

I found this in the (7.2) manuals:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/72final/6521/6521pro.html
Chpater 3 is about installing the OS (from tape or CD), chapter 5.4 tells you all about backing is up.

To create a stand-alone backup environment, read http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/72final/6521/6521pro_006.html#index_x_299:

Before beginning the upgrade, make sure you have a standalone BACKUP kit on one of these media. If you do not have one, create a standalone BACKUP kit using the STABACKIT.COM procedure as described in the upgrade and installation supplement for your VAX computer.

AFAIK, this will eventually create a system area you can boot from for backing up your system, be it from tape, but it can can also be on your system disk, in directory [SYSE] and/or [SYSF]. So I think there must be a way to boot from that location, to CREATE a backup anyway (it _might_ work for a restore operation as well).

[Malleka Ramachandran]

I am trying to create and use standalone backup kit on OpenVMS Alpha 6.2.
I followed the instructions in the manual. The CD we have is called binaries and I don't know if this is the bootable one. It failed to boot from this CD. So I tried to create the kit using the PCSI command procedure, mentioned as the alternate backup/restore method. But I don't have much luck there either.
I was able to boot from the kit I created on a user disk and I was able to look at all the devices. But when I try to mount the system disk, I get an error message that
parsing error on policy.
From the discussions here, I understand that policy qulaifier is used with mount/dismount commands in a volume shadowing environment. We do not have volume shadowing enabled. I don't know how to fix this.
There is no help on policy qualifier for mount/dismount commands on 6.2.
I would appreciate any input.

Thanks,
Malleka

[Malleka Ramachandran]

Based on one of the posts here, I tried to change the product install to /log instead of /nolog and looked at the files being copied to the kit.
I used the dcltables.exe copied to the kit in my command table and got the message as follows:

$ set command/table=$1$DKB200:[VMS$COMMON.][SYSLIB]dcltables.exe
$ mount/over=id dkb0:
%CLI-F-SYNTAX, error parsing 'POLICY'
-CLI-E-ENTNF, specified entity not found in command tables

I copied the dcltables.exe from the running system to the kit directory and used this to mount the disk successfully in the standalone backup environment.
back sys$library:dcltables.exe; $1$DKB200:[VMS$COMMON.][SYSLIB]/new/lo
%BACKUP-W-NOFILES, no files selected from $1$DKB100:[SYS0.][SYSLIB]DCLTABLES.EXE
;
%BACKUP-S-CREATED, created $1$DKB200:[VMS$COMMON.][SYSLIB]DCLTABLES.EXE;102

[Robert Brooks_1]

I have no idea what you are trying to do!

Standalone backup does not exist for any modern version of OpenVMS Alpha, so I am not
sure how you could have tried

". . . to create and use standalone backup kit on OpenVMS Alpha 6.2.
I followed the instructions in the manual."

since there is no way that standalone backup would be documented for OpenVMS Alpha V6.2.

Additionally, you must be using a CD from OpenVMS Alpha V7.2-2 or newer, as that's when
the /POLICY qualifier was added to MOUNT and
DISMOUNT

Simply put, what are you trying to do?

Why do you think you need to create a standalone backup kit?

On OpenVMS Alpha, the distribution CD will boot, giving you a menu of options. Option 7, I believe, will drop you to DCL, where you can do a lot more than issue the BACKUP command.


-- Rob

[Steven Schweda]

The part of this discussion which did not
go off the rails seems to have been
moderately accurate, but a few people seem
pretty free with bad info:

> STABKIT.COM. I think it was in Sys$System:,

> V5.5-2 CDs is not bootable

It might help a little to know what sort of
disk, floppy, CD-ROM, and/or tape drives are
available on the VAX systems.

Generally, having a copy of standalone BACKUP
(SAB) on every bootable (VAX) device and/or
medium in the place is pretty harmless and
can be quite helpful when hardware fails.

> note that booting from CD is not fast.

Booting from a TK50 opens whole new vistas
of meaning for "not fast". CD-ROM drives as
old as the (1X) RRD42 can often be upgraded
at minimal cost, providing better speed as
well more reliable operation with recordable
media.

[Ian Miller.]

Having a bootable tape as well as a bootable CD and standalone backup on the system disk and other disks are all good things to do for various circumstances.

What you need to do is to write the recovery procedures for various situations and this will clarify what you need in order to be able to recover.

[Malleka Ramachandran]

>>> Ihave no idea what you are trying to do!

Standalone backup does not exist for any modern version of OpenVMS Alpha, so I am not
sure how you could have tried

". . . to create and use standalone backup kit on OpenVMS Alpha 6.2.
I followed the instructions in the manual."

since there is no way that standalone backup would be documented for OpenVMS Alpha V6.2.

I meant SYS$SYSTEM:AXPVMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN.COM which is an alternate method for creating a bootable media, just another name for standalone backup kit.

>>>Additionally, you must be using a CD from OpenVMS Alpha V7.2-2 or newer, as that's when
the /POLICY qualifier was added to MOUNT and
DISMOUNT

The CD which says 6.2 binaries is what is what I tried to boot from but it crashed and never came up. What I could boot was the standalone backup kit which is created by the SYS$SYSTEM:AXPVMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN.COM command procedure, on another user disk. This procedure was invoked from a 6.2 system, so I believed that it would create a compatible standalone boot.

[Steven Schweda]

> I meant SYS$SYSTEM:AXPVMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN.COM
> which is an alternate method for creating
> a bootable media, just another name for
> standalone backup kit.

Obviously, that's not "just another name for
standalone backup kit". Standalone BACKUP is
a VAX-only feature.

A specific problem like this really belongs
in a thread of its own.

And "a medium" would sound better than "a
media".