ADSM-L

Re: Lotus Notes Non-TDP backups

2003-07-29 04:45:26
Subject: Re: Lotus Notes Non-TDP backups
From: David McClelland <David.McClelland AT REUTERS DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 09:43:54 +0100
Stefan, Gordon,

Urrgh - no! 

As soon as you try to restore any of these files which will have changed during 
the backup, even with open file support, you'll more than likely get a corrupt 
.nsf database! Notes .nsf files are pretty sensitive and any change somewhere 
in one part of the db will have repercussions elsewhere in the db and before 
you know it you won't be able to open up the .nsf at all, and will get 'b-tree 
structure invalid' or similar complaints from Notes. You need to have the Notes 
server process 'down' in order to quiece the databases and prevent them from 
being written to before backing them up.

The *usual* way of handling Notes backups without using TDP is to use a 
'backup' server - the concept works like this:

You have a separate Notes server (i.e. a 'backup Notes server) which contains 
replicas of the databases on the live Notes servers. Using Notes replication, 
all changes to the live databases are replicated to the replicas on the backup 
server. At a time controlled by you, you take the Notes server process down on 
the backup server (as no users connect directly to the backup Notes server, 
there will be no outage) and then perform the backups of the now quiesced .nsf 
files using the normal TSM BA client. Once the backup is complete, bring up the 
Notes server on the backup server and begin replication with the live servers 
to the backup .nsf's up to date again. Depending upon hardware, you can have 
many live Notes server's worth of .nsf's contained on a single backup Notes 
server - just ensure you have enough time to replicate the data from live to 
backup server.

In terms of recoveries, as the backup Notes server is down during backups, you 
might want to have an additional Notes partition somewhere on a backup server 
which you can use as a 'recovery server' - a Notes server which is *always* up, 
regardless of whether a backup is taking place. Users can connect to this 
directly and pull back any recovered .nsf databases, or even just documents 
from a .nsf.

Hope this helps :o)

David McClelland
Global Management Systems
Reuters Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Holzwarth [mailto:stefan.holzwarth AT ADAC DOT DE] 
Sent: 29 July 2003 07:06
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: AW: Lotus Notes Non-TDP backups


I would try openfile support in 5.2 . First tests look quite good. Regards 
Stefan Holzwarth

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Gordon Woodward [mailto:gordon.woodward AT DB DOT COM]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 29. Juli 2003 04:01
An: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Betreff: Lotus Notes Non-TDP backups


We currently have over 160Gb of Notes mail databases that need to be backed up 
nightly. Due to incompatabilities with the Notes TDP, our version of TSM
(v4.2.2.5) and the way compaction runs on our Notes servers, we have to use the 
normal Tivoli backup client to backup the mailboxes. It takes about 12 hours 
for all the databases to get backed up each night but the vast amount of this 
time seems to be spend trying and then retrying to send mailboxes to the TSM 
server. A typical schedule log looks like this:

28-07-2003 19:51:53 Retry # 2  Normal File-->       157,548,544
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\beggsa.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 19:52:28 Normal File-->        70,778,880
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\bingleyj.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 19:54:05 Retry # 1  Normal File-->       349,437,952
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\bignasck.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 19:55:10 Normal File-->       131,072,000
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\Bishnic.nsf  Changed
28-07-2003 19:56:58 Normal File-->       265,289,728
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\bellm.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 19:58:08 Retry # 1  Normal File-->       131,072,000
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\Bishnic.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 20:00:46 Normal File-->       387,186,688
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\BLACKAD.NSF  Changed
28-07-2003 20:03:52 Normal File-->       367,263,744
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\BERNECKC.NSF  Changed
28-07-2003 20:06:18 Retry # 1  Normal File-->       387,186,688
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\BLACKAD.NSF [Sent]
28-07-2003 20:10:11 Normal File-->     1,011,613,696
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\binneyk.nsf  Changed
28-07-2003 20:11:52 Retry # 2  Normal File-->       953,942,016
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\andrewsj.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 20:12:01 Retry # 1  Normal File-->       367,263,744
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\BERNECKC.NSF [Sent]
28-07-2003 20:12:05 Normal File-->        10,485,760
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\bousran.nsf [Sent]
28-07-2003 20:13:40 Normal File-->       720,633,856
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\mail\BLACKC.NSF  Changed
28-07-2003 20:18:58 Retry # 3  Normal File-->     1,863,057,408
\\sdbo5211\d$\notes\data\dbecna.nsf  Changed

Is there anything we can do reduce the window for this backup? Both the TSM 
server and our Notes server have dedicated 1Gb links so bandwidth isn't a 
problem. The Backup Copy Group for the Management Class the Notes data is 
allocated to has Copy Serialization set to 'Shared Static'. Would changing this 
to Dynamic be beneficial in reducing the amount of retries that occur and also 
setting CHANGERETRIES to a lower option help?

Thanks in advance,

Gordon Woodward
Senior Support Analyst
Deutsche Asset Management (Australia) Limited


--

This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are 
not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please 
notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized 
copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly 
forbidden.


--------------------------------------------------------------- -
        Visit our Internet site at http://www.reuters.com

Get closer to the financial markets with Reuters Messaging - for more
information and to register, visit http://www.reuters.com/messaging

Any views expressed in this message are those of  the  individual
sender,  except  where  the sender specifically states them to be
the views of Reuters Ltd.

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>