If any nodes except the node used to run BACKUP are booted during the backup operations described in this appendix, your cluster will become partitioned, where nodes in the existing cluster divide into two or more independent clusters. This condition can cause data file corruption.

In addition, these backup environments do not restrict your use of DCL commands to the BACKUP command only, which further increases your risk of accidentally destroying or corrupting data on a disk. Therefore, to avoid jeopardizing the integrity of your data in any way, HP recommends that you shut down the entire OpenVMS Cluster system before you back up your system disk.