ADSM-L

Re: restoring client as a full OS install?

2001-11-01 12:48:07
Subject: Re: restoring client as a full OS install?
From: Thomas Denier <Thomas.Denier AT MAIL.TJU DOT EDU>
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 12:45:21 -0500
Quoting Alexander Lazarevich <alazarev AT HERA.ITG.UIUC DOT EDU>:

> I'd like to know if anyone has restored a client to a blank/new drive
> in order to fully bring back the OS. What I mean is this: If a client
> disk drive fails, and I need bring that client machine back up ASAP, it
> would be quicker if I could restore every single file that was backed
> up for the client. If all system/install/data files on the client were
> backed up, then the restore should work, right? This would be quicker
> than reinstalling all apps, because we have a lot of apps...
>
> I already tried this. But it didn't work because I was trying to
> restore to a drive that was the currently running OS client, and I
> think ADSM was unable to restore files that were running processes. So
> now I'm going to try and restore to a second clean drive that I installed
> in the machine. I also installed a base OS on the second drive, rather
> than keeping it a clean drive with a formated filesystem of the OS type.
> I'm not sure if one was is better than another.
>
> I read the ADSM manual, thinking that the section called "Disaster
> Recovery" would be just what I'm doing, and it's not. I already know
> what my machine specs are, I just need to know if I can trully restore
> the OS.
>
> Cause everything on a computer is a file, right? If that's true then
> this should work, right?
>
> Anyone done this before?

I have done this with Linux, and looked into the possibility of doing it
with AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris. With Linux I was able to run the restores
without installing Linux on a hard disk on the client system. I booted
the client from a floppy disk normally used to support OS installation
from a network server and connected to an NFS server containing the TSM
client and most of the files needed by Linux itself. After I restored
the files I had to run a command to rebuild the boot block on the disk.
As far as I know, all Unix systems would require some analog of this
command after restoring the files on their hard disks. The O'Reilly
book "Unix Backup & Recovery" discusses this sort of thing in detail.
It does not mention TSM in particular, but does discuss processes for
recreating systems from file-oriented backups.