News Group Posts

tape backup append

Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
From: "D. Thomas Podnar" <tom@microlite.com>
Subject: Re: sco-list: One Tape Drive many machines- Restore RootFS
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2001 16:09:21 GMT
Message-ID: <200110051609.MAA18872@mlite.microlite.com> 

> Bill Campbell Wrote:

: Backup Edge will do this.  I assume that Lone Tar and other
: ``SuperTar'' programs can as well.

Actually Bill, BackupEDGE is not a 100% solution for this problem, as
described, although I appreciate the sentiment. I'll point out the
problems below.

Perhaps Jeff Hyman can tell us whether his Lone-Tar or Backup
Professional products will fit the entire bill.

: On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 08:36:20AM -0700, Terry wrote:
: >We have a number of SCO5.0.5 servers in our computer room. We want to
: >backup all the servers onto one tape drive, no problem. Currently we
: >have one tape drive per machine, this is a pain in the butt. However,
: >I have a concern about the RootFS backups and how to Restore them. We
: >would like to use CD's.

BackupEDGE SS does NOT currently support the concept of multiple
backups on one tape. Although it is not technically difficult to do
make BACKUPS by simply using the no rewind device, setmarks, etc.,
there are issues of verification, indexing for Quick File Access,
and disaster recovery that make it difficult to support our
ENTIRE environment. There is also the philosophical problem of having
"all your eggs in one basket". Until we can resolve these to our
satisfaction, we won't support multiple backups to a tape.

We certainly support the concept of remote backups using tape changers,
autoloaders, libraries, etc. Any of the machines can change the
remote tape before beginning a backup.

: >1.I would like to make my RootFS backup on a CD, is this a problem? If
: >not, what CDR do you recommand, We are a IBM shop.

: >2.What special things would I need to do on my Root&Boot Diskettes to
: >then access my CD from the diskette for a restore.

Terry, I assume this is because you think you need to restore the
root FS to restore remote tapes. This is not necessarily the case
but let's look at the issues.

Later versions of OpenServer have network capabilities built into
the "mkdev fd" boot floppies. These could potentially be the base
for restoring an entire remote backup. Lot's of testing and manual
work to do.

Or, you could do a backup of the root/stand filesystems to a file
using cpio and burn them to a SCSI CD-R/RW using cdrecord. Note that
ATAPI CD burning is not available under OpenServer.

So you could probably do what you DESCRIBED. But that may not be the
most effective method.


BackupEDGE SS can create boot floppies OR a bootable CD, either of
which can automatically set up filesystems and restore from a remote
tape drive. Additionally, you can create single or multiple volume
backups of your boot, root, and any other filesystems directly to
a CD-R/RW, and have them be bootable directly into our crash recovery
system.

BackupEDGE SS can create bootable CDs, or bootable CD backups, on
either the local CD-R/RW drive, or across the network to a remote
device. So if you had a single SCSI CD-R/RW and a bunch of ATAPI
readers, you'd still be able to make CDs and eliminate floppies.

In any event, although we will do a lot of what you need, we're
not going to give you an automatic method of doing multiple
backups to a single tape.


There is an announcement about BackupEDGE SS posted on
comp.unix.sco.announce. Of course, more info and a trial
copy is available on our web site.

Best Regards,
Tom
---
  D. Thomas Podnar - President  tom@microlite.com
  Microlite Corporation         724-375-6711 Voice
  2315 Mill Street              724-375-6908 Fax
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+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Makers of                                                 |
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|                  and OpenServer 5.0.x.                    |
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+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|  Now With Tape, Autochanger, CD-R/RW and DVD-RAM Support  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
 

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