Question:
What’s the best way to backup a Digital UNIX system that houses a large
amount of data?
Clarification:
In my original post I mentioned my system contained 300mb of data. I
*should* have said 300 GIGABYTES of data. Sorry ‘bout that!
Additionally several folks wanted to know what data warehouse we’re using.
The data warehouse software is of our own making (HOPS International) and
being
used in our own data center. We specialize in large date warehouse
installations
(>100gb) where query performance (especially ad-hoc) is paramount.
Thanks to:
Paul Yahnig
Alan Rollow
Stephen Mullin
Susan Rodriguez
Stan Horwitz
David DeWolfe
Rodrigo Poblete
Jim Belonis
Blake Roberts
Steve Copeland
Kevin Criss
Almost everyone seems to use one of two products:
1. dump (for UFS) and vdump (for AdvFS)
2. NSR
Many folks use both. (dump/vdump for / and /usr; NSR for everything else.)
Important notes on each of these follows. One often-heard sentiment which
applies no matter what utility you use is to have 2 tapes for everything!
dump/vdump
dump (UFS) and vdump (AdvFS) are used by almost everyone. Straight and
simple, but cannot be used if your disk spans multiple tapes. Neither
handles tape libraries. Very reliable, if not the fastest. Recommended
almost universally for / and /usr backups against catastrophic failure.
Good interactive restore capability (-i).
NSR
NSR (Networker Save Restore) is liked for its full-featured capabilities.
Networker was designed to backup clients over a network, but can perform
locally with similar design goals. (i.e. data being sent from multiple
sources (clients, devices) to a single tape to keep the tape at its highest
performance. Fairly expensive. Faster than tar and better for verifying
errors. Restore capabilities were mentioned as a positive from several
individuals. Includes fancy options for scheduling incremental backups and
performaing over-the-network backups. Relatively nice graphical user
interface. Has a good compression algorithm. Several people complained
about the NSR indexing. Apparently it can get VERY large ...
Additional Products To Consider:
1) Legato release 5.2 (Networker Save and Restore). Apparently the current
shipping release is NSR 4.4. (Ships with DU4.0D on the associated products CD)
2) SYNCSORT (Robert D.B. Kerr, JR. phone 1-(201)-930-8200
3) Alexandria (Kim Donovan, phone 1-(303)-449-6400x1117 or 1-(800)
-833-1117) Full featured many price points. This company is also
known as SpectraLogic.
4) Veritas (Tom Lillis, phone 1-(812)-334-3330). This is a full
featured product. Veritas uses a proprietary file format.
cknorr_at_hops.com
305-827-8600 ext. 238 (voice)
305-827-0999 (fax)
Received on Mon Sep 21 1998 - 21:01:51 NZST