On-line backup, Advfs and swap

From: Martyn Brown, Lincoln University <brown_at_whio.lincoln.ac.nz>
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 1996 16:48:48 +1200

Hi,

Our first Alpha just arrived, and I'm planning how to set it up. I
need on-line backups.

We will initially have 2x 2GB drives. I want to put root, swap1, /usr
and /usr/users on one drive. The second will hold our news spool,
plus swap2.

One possible backup method is Networker Save & Restore. Is this
able to give good on-line backups regardless of which volume managers
(if any) and file systems are used ?

Another possibility is Advfs, clone file sets and vdump, which may
have additional advantages such as quicker boot times.

Things I've read suggest the news spool disk should be set up using
ufs, so I guess Advfs is a possibility only for the first drive.

My reading of the SysAdmin manual ch8 suggests that for performance
reasons, an Advfs file domain should occupy a whole drive, ie
partition c. How then can you provide swap space ?

What about setting up a 1.9GB partition 'a' and a 100 MB partition
'b', and having 'a' be a file domain with three filesets : root, /usr
and /usr/users. 'b' becomes swap1. Is this a good idea or a bad idea ?
Clearly it contravenes the suggestion for optimum perfomance in the
manual.

Another idea is to put all the swap on the second drive, which is
not optimal for swap performance, and has the further downside that
if the second drive goes down, the whole system becomes inoperable
because of lack of swap space. Is this preferable to the scenario
above, or not ?

Thanks, Martyn Brown (brown_at_lincoln.ac.nz)
__________________________________________________________
Martyn Brown, Snr Computer Consultant, ph 64 3 3252 811
Computer Services, Lincoln University, fax 64 3 3253 865
Canterbury, New Zealand email brown_at_lincoln.ac.nz
Received on Wed Jul 03 1996 - 07:08:04 NZST

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