If you mean IBM FAStT 500/600/700/900, you *do* have FlashCopy. Even FAStT
200 has it but is limited to Wintel&Linux/x86 platforms.
It is optionally licensed feature and requires upgrade to FAStT Storage
Manager v8. Discuss with your IBM salesrep.
Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant
Zoltan Forray/AC/VCU <zforray AT VCU DOT EDU>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
19.08.2003 17:18
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:
Subject: Re: IMAGE and INCREMENTAL backups
Thank you for the info.
Unfortunately, we do not have a "snapshot/flashcopy" type of device.
Currently, these are FAST-T drives.
We are going to have to live with DYNAMIC IMAGE dumps that aren't
completely "clean". This is only to expedite the recovery from possible,
future, massive failures, like we have experienced, recently. So, we will
have to live with the understanding that some data loss will probably
occur.
The loss of a few-thousand files and recovering in 1-3 days versus 15+
days to restore millions of file-by-file is going to have to be
acceptable.
We hope to perform some testing on the restore process, soon. I have run
an IMAGE backup on a smaller (1.2GB) box/filesystem. Haven't tested the
restore, yet.
Steve Harris <Steve_Harris AT HEALTH.QLD.GOV DOT AU>
Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>
08/18/2003 06:23 PM
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager"
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:
Subject: Re: IMAGE and INCREMENTAL backups
Hi Zoltan
We've been told the 3592 announcement is this coming Thursday, whether
that's US or Australian time I'm not sure, but our reseller is very keen
to sell them to us unstead of the H upgrade we'd been planning. I won't
steal their thunder by giving away any details.
I just looked up the doc and I'm surprised to see that TSM 5.1 supports an
image backup without mounting read only, with the advice to run an fsck
after restore. I'd have to test the heck out of it before I'd trust that.
You don't say what type of client you are backing up, but I'd be inclined
to take some sort of shapshot if that was possible. A five minute outage
to get a clean backup is worth it, considering the investment that has
been made.
In AIX and Solaris it is possible to run a snapshot filesystem - but I
don't think you can run an image backup on it.
It is also possible to split a mirror and with some fiddling mount it on a
different mount point.
The third alternative would be to take an image at the disk array level
e.g. EMC Timefinder, IBM FlashCopy or similar and then back that up. One
advantage here is that the copy volumes could be mounted on thenew TSM
server and thus backup directly across the SAN rather that via ethernet.
Management probably won't like it, but that's the cost of a clean image.
Regards
Steve Harris
AIX and TSM Admin
Queensland Health, Brisbane Australia
>>> zforray AT VCU DOT EDU 19/08/2003 5:45:37 >>>
I think that I have asked a similar question, so I apologize if this
sounds like a repeat.....
We are trying to implement IMAGE backups for our larger systems (1TB
plus). We have purchased a new AIX system just for this purpose. Our
experience with IMAGE backups, is pretty much nil !
We are still trying to figure out what type of tape drive/library to buy.
We are leaning towards an LTO2 system (I have been trying to convince them
to look at the new 3592 but it is so new there is no information on
IBM.COM about them. Probably too expensive, anyway !!).
My boss wants to dedicate this TSM server to *JUST* IMAGE BACKUPS. The
INCREMENTALs would still go to the existing TSM server that handles it
right now. This way, we wouldn't have to do much, if any, administrative
processes (reclaims, copypools, etc). (Is this even do-able ? )
However, my concerns are the elapsed times and synchronization.
Lets say the IMAGE backup takes 24-hours or more. Since this is an active
email system, there are tens-of-thousands of files being created / edited
/ received / deleted / sent, daily (when the server was down for 2-days,
the NAV email scanners had over 90K messages backed up, awaiting to be
received).
Would we continue to run INCREMENTALS to server-A, while the IMAGE backup
is running to server-B or do we have to wait until after the IMAGE
finishes ?
How about the restore/syncing processes. How would it figure out what to
restore ? Would we just guess on a PIT set to the time the IMAGE backup
started ?
What about files "in flight" during the IMAGE backup and/or from the time
the IMAGE started and the INCREMENTAL started ? Are they just considered
"collateral damage" and not recoverable ?
Any thoughts on this would be helpfull.
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