HP SIM Backup/Failover

[cybacaT]

HP SIM will be a crucial tool if our medium-size(180+ servers) enterprise adopts it. As such it will likely be running on a dedicated server with appropriate redundancy as a matter of course. But then there's the issue of backups and failover.

The minimum that would be acceptable would be a 2-hourly transfer of data from the Primary server to a backup, in case of complete failure of the Primary. Does HP SIM offer any functionality in terms of backing up the database to another location? If so, where could I find documentation on this?

Even better would be a hot-swap failover, requiring that database updates are performed simultaneously on the primary and backup servers. Can this be achieved in HP SIM?

[David Libby_4]

What platform will you be running it on?

[Chavin]

We are defining a backup architecture, too, but we haven't decided yet. We use SIM only for hardware failure monitoring. We are thinking of installing two CMS (Windows version), send the traps from the servers to both CMS. The main CMS will be responsible for forwarding the traps to our main management framework (Patrol); in case of failure, the forwarding script would be enabled on the backup CMS.

For the database, either we would have local databases and make a dump twice a day on the main CMS, send it over to the backup and reload it (sounds a bit chaotic in my opinion). Or we would use a remote SQL Server database, and have the backup CMS connect to the main database if necessary.

I too would like to hear from others who have defined their backup solution.

[David Libby_4]

Well we're at the same stage as you... definition of a backup strategy. The is the mxrepositorysave command for dumping and importing the database but I would seriously recommend careful testing as I have a support call open for this function. Quite frankly SIM is still not production quality in many respects.

Currently we are using the standard Postgresql solution but we are seriously considering plugging into a remote oracle box.

[cybacaT]

Thanks for your responses so far. I may be ignorant in this area, but I am assuming that HPSIM DB can be treated just like any other SQL DB with regard to backups and restores. If this is the case I can check with our developers about what methods they're employing for similar DBs here.

I'm curious though to find out the issue that you experienced with backups/restores David. I, like everyone else, need to have a rock solid backup and failover solution in place for this crucial system.

I'll talk to the SW guys and post back their replies...

[cybacaT]

Apparently it should be a simple scripted backup, although our DBAs foreshadowed problems if MSDE is used instead of a full-blown SQL server install.

They said they can copy transaction logs over as frequently as needed - every 15 minutes if need be. They also said there is an option in SQL server to write the data to 2 locations at once.

I'm seeing a HP tech Monday so will ask him directly.

[David Libby_4]

Basically the backupDB function in the GUI appeasrs to run and reports no error, but it results in an empty file... I tried mxrepositorysave in a cronjob but it resulted in the same scenario. My DB skills are limited and I'm jsut reading up on doing dumps from postgres directly.

As you stated, it *is* possible to treat the DB as any standard SQL server... but as I understand it, it's important not to tinker/modify in anyway the DB (i.e. adding tables etc) as such actions would nullify support from HP.