Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!ecsvax!tpmsph
From: tpmsph@ecsvax.UUCP (Thomas P. Morris)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Backup Operations Procedures
Message-ID: <4982@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 88 18:55:01 GMT
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 39
Keywords: Multidisk sites backup frequency procedures effort


	The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of 
Public Health, Division of Computing and Information Services, runs a 
3-node VAXcluster, attached to which we have 4 RA81's. One is a system
disk, two are nearly full of user directories and data, and one has
user utilities, alternate page and swap files, and some user directories and 
data. Our primary system usage is for support of office automation and
word processing usage for eleven departments or divisions of the School.
To provide user file safety, we perform:

	- daily incremental backups
	- weekly incremental backups
	- weekly HSC disk image backups
	- monthly physical disk image (standalone) backups

The daily and weekly incrementals are done on only 3 of the disks. The
HSCs are done for all disks, as are the monthly standalones. Users are
allowed to remain logged on for the daily backups, but the system is essentially
shut down for the weekly and monthly backups, for ~4-5 hours for the weekly,
and 8-10 hours for the monthly. Yes, it seems to be overkill to us, too.

There has to be an easier way! How do other sites handle this? We'd like
to rotate the "monthly" backups to one disk / week. We've only got 1 TA78
tape drive: would a second tape drive help? What about reserving a new
(additional) RA81 to be used as follows: mount it as a shadow volume,
tahen take the shadow offline, and perform an HSC backup on that? That
could be done 1 disk at a time, one week at a time, with users "locked out"
only for the duration of having the shadow volume built.

Comments? Suggestions? Thanx.

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Tom Morris                                 BITNET: TOM@UNCSPHVX
UNC School of Public Health                UUCP  : ...!mcnc!ecsvax!tpmsph
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Tom Morris                                 BITNET: TOM@UNCSPHVX
UNC School of Public Health                UUCP  : ...!mcnc!ecsvax!tpmsph
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