Backup software for AIX

UNIX AIX
1

Hello,

Looking for some backup software for AIX ,
once tivoli is bit expensive , i'm searching for alternatives,
do you guys have some experience with some other software?

Cheers,

2

Hi,

we used "CommVault Simpana" and "Symantec NetBackup" for Backups under AIX, but i can't tell you which one is less expensive. Both needs to be licensed.

Regards

3

I've seen lots of interesting backup solutions in my time, whatever you choose, remember that it's when you are restoring the data that it's key to be in control. in the end my experience is that you get what you pay for.

Cheers
Ross

4

Before you start searching for a product you might first find out your requirements. Take the following as a (not complete at all) list of questions you should try to find answers for:

  • how many servers (LPARs) are to back up?

  • how much data are to be backed up?

  • daily

  • weekly

  • monthly

  • quarterly

  • yearly
    Oftenly the surrounding environment (network lines, ...) is the limiting factor more than the capacity of the backup system itself. It might transpire that you need several network interfaces to provide enough bandwidth for you backup needs.

  • how long do the data have to be stored and how much do you expect to hold in the backup system once it is "fully loaded"?
    i.e. if you backup 1 GB every day and need to hold it for 1 month then you need to provide 31GB of space somewhere for this. How are you going to store all the data you back up? Tapes tend to work only for so long (as do CDs, disks, MO-drives, ...) and i.e. if you need to hold data for 10 years then putting them on a tape is probably a bad idea.

  • do you have a certain timeframe for taking the backup and how long is it?
    Some applications need to be online most of the day but have to be taken offline for the backup (databases, for instance). If you do not have enough time to take the backup you need to come up with something else: snapshots taken by SAN, incremental backups, "hot backups" (backup the DB inconsistently and use the archive logs to get it to a consisstent state) and some more procedures.

  • how long is the restore allowed to take place?
    Depending on the method you use for backup this may vary greatly. Take that into account when planning.

  • What exactly do you want to do with the backups?
    There are all sorts of backups: data, machine configurations, ... Do you want the backups to: let you restore the system once its hardware fails? Restore data only? If data, do you need to selectively restore certain files or just whole systems?

  • Do you have ccertain legal requirements?
    Certain companies (banks in the EU, for examples) have to store some data in a way which is not manipulatable once it is stored. There are specialized storage systems (EMCs Centera, for instance) to do this. You need to identify such a requirement (or other legal requirements for your backups) and take that into account.

OK, that was off the top of my head. Do not think the above list is in any way complete. It is just to show that there is more to the backup than meets the eye. Plan thoroughly and think about products only after you did that planning.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

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5

Hi ,
this is a little off the path , but
I need to backup some RS/6000 AIX servers, and wondered what partitions/files , i would need if I need to restore it from tape ,

6

Welcome madmacher,

It depends what you want to be able to restore. If what you really are asking is "How do i take a backup that I can clone my server with rather than a base install and manual reconfiguration", then AIX has a lovely utility, mksysb

This will write to tape or filesystems (which you can then force out to DVD or move to a NIM server) in a way that you can boot from. The installation process then kicks in and recreates your rootvg. 3rd party software can be used to recover the contents of your other volume groups.

Here is the mksysb manual page

I hope that this helps. Apologies if I've misinterpreted the question.

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7

rbatte1 gave a very sound advice. To expand on what he said:

Filesystems - logical volumes - are organised in "volume groups" in AIX. The base of every system is the "rootvg", which holds all the vital LVs for the system to work ("/", "/usr", "/var", swapspace, etc.). The "mksysb" utility backups exactly this volume group and adds provisions to boot from such an image. With a working "mksysb" image it is possible to take a naked (sufficiently similar) hardware and reconstruct the system, completely configured (users, interfaces, groups, printqueues, and so on).

In most environments the basic backup plan is: take a "system backup" used to restore the system in case of hardware failure to a backup system. Then take data backups from the rest, used to restore the systems data, should the necessity arise.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

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