We use Citrix here and the last I saw, it wasn't a supported platform for
TSM. However, I've completed successful "Bare Metal" restores of these
servers. We have Citrix XP running on Windows 2003 Server. Here's how we
back it up.
Nightly:
1. Utilize open file support with the TSM client. (Needs its own drive
letter for the cache.)
2. Dump the System State to a file using NT Backup.
3. Exclude the System Object from TSM processing.
4. Backup the NT Backup file that has the Windows System State.
Weekly:
1. Run a schedule of type command that
a. Stops Citrix and all its associated services, including the
MSDE which they use for the Citrix database.
b. Runs a regular incremental TSM backup.
c. Reboots the system.
Here's our restore procedure from a high level.
1. Use IBM software to configure the RAID controller and raid groups
locally.
2. Install Windows 2003 Server.
3. Use the Citrix tool to remap the c: drive to m: then create the data
drive n: in our case.
4. Install the TSM client.
5. Restore the data drives.... The N: drive in our case.
6. Restore the boot drive... "M:\"
7. Find the NT Backup file that contains the system state.
8. Use NT Backup to restore the system state.
9. Reboot.
This works like a champ for us. The main Metaframe server (whatever it's
called in Citrix) has the MSDE database that we use open file to backup.
We've restored from this backup, just fine, but I still don't trust it.
So, I got the client to agree to a 30 minute outage weekly so we could
shut the services down and back the files up cold. Oh, we also dump the
MSDE database to a flat file usin OSQL, but haven't actually got around to
testing the restore from that, since the other methods worked fine.
One gotcha I ran into was file retention policies. We're only keeping 3
versions of an active file, so the weekly cold backup of the MSDE database
was expiring prior to the next backup. I just assigned the file to a
longer management class in the dsm.opt file so we always have a couple of
versions of the cold backup as well as the hot backup we create with the
open file agent.
We've tested the restores twice, and completed the restores both times in
less than 2 hours. In our case, the longest part of the restore process
was actually installing the OS.
Curtis
curtis.stewart AT lawson DOT com
Tammy Schellenberg <TSchellenberg AT PROSPERACREDITUNION DOT CA>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
09/15/2004 10:50 AM
Please respond to
"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
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Subject
Question regarding TSM and citrix servers
Does anyone out there use citrix servers? Here is the question.
Can I expect any difficulties in backing up a Citrix server with Tivoli?
I have two servers that are serving miscellaneous programs to our users
and
they are not generic enough that we can afford not to back them up. Our
Network Manager has asked that I install the Tivoli BA client on these
computers. I thought I would check with as I have been unable to find any
documentation about it on the internet. This may mean that there is no
problem with doing it but I would like to confirm this before doing it.
Tammy Schellenberg
Systems Administrator, MCP
Prospera Credit Union
email: tschellenberg AT prosperacreditunion DOT ca
DID: 604-864-6578
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