Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!ncs.dnd.ca!rpburry
From: rpburry@ncs.dnd.ca (Paul Burry)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Requests for improvements to SYBASE
Keywords: backup restore dump load 8mm tape
Message-ID: <1991Jan25.012332.13363@ncs.dnd.ca>
Date: 25 Jan 91 01:23:32 GMT
References: <12261@sybase.sybase.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Dept of National Defence
Lines: 49

In article <12261@sybase.sybase.com> tim@ohday.sybase.com (Tim Wood) writes:
|
|In article <116@jetson.UUCP>, danq@jetson.UUCP (Daniel Quinlan) writes:
|
|>  Well, since someone else started the complaining, I have the same 
|>  problem, and a few other complaints.  Unfortunately, I have no solutions.
|>  Here are my complaints, however.  Is there anyone from Sybase around?
|
|Yes, I'll take a crack at some.  I am the lead development engineer for 
|the rearchitecture of the DUMP/LOAD facility in our upcoming Release 5.0.
|I'll attempt a response, with the observation that more effective
|help can be obtained from our Customer Support department than from the
|net, even from a Sybase respondent.  Please excuse the delay, our mail/news
|server has been undergoing a painful upgrade, but is now ambulatory.
|
|>  
|>  Backups
|>  -------
|>  
|>  Backups are particularly difficult to perform; we use  8  mm
|>  tapes, as does most of the Unix community at this point. For
|>  some difficult to fathom reason, Sybase requires  that  dump
|>  devices  be  declared within the database, and designates an
|>  8mm tape as a disk.  For a presumably related reason, Sybase
|>  is  unable  to  dump  to multiple 8mm tapes. This limits the
|>  size of our database, and is such a serious deficiency  that
|>  it could in the future cause us to move to a different data-
|>  base system.

While on the subject of backups and 8mm tape drives, can you either
now or in the future (version 5?) direct SYBASE to perform a backup
and use multiple tape drives in parallel?  While 8mm is attractive 
because of the obvious capacity of the tapes, backing up a large
multi-gigabyte database would take many hours at ~250 kb/s.  I would
gladly pay for the extra 8mm drives if they could be used in parallel.

How do others back up their large SYBASE databases?  What types of devices
do they use?


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burry			
Voice: (613)-991-7325		Internet: rpburry@ncs.dnd.ca
Fax:   (613)-991-7323		UUCP:	  ..!{uunet,cunews}!ncs.dnd.ca!rpburry
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burry			
Voice: (613)-991-7325		Internet: rpburry@ncs.dnd.ca
Fax:   (613)-991-7323		UUCP:	  ..!{uunet,cunews}!ncs.dnd.ca!rpburry