Backup the Solaris OS

Hi gurus

I wish to backup the Solaris OS and ftp to another server disk drive monthly
but currently lack of knowledge about this.

** The server is production server.

Please assists. =)

Since the system is in production, you might not be able to bring to to single user or umount the filesystems. Other than that, you may follow this comprehensive doc
BigAdmin - Submitted Tech Tip: Backing Up and Restoring the Solaris OS With "ufsdump"

---------- Post updated at 05:03 PM ---------- Previous update was at 05:01 PM ----------

You can nfs mount the remote server's filesystem then dump your data from your local system to that mount point

It is better using Flash archive

BigAdmin Submitted Article: Using Flash Archive in the Solaris Operating System for Disaster Recovery
Possible,, You can take flash archives weekly and housekeep them over the days. When there's an emegency to recover the system, you can recover it within 20 mins :smiley:

Not always. In order to be able to restore you need to have a Solaris boot DVD or jumpstart server, and must follow the flash installation or live upgrade process. You also have to know the information about ip address/hotname etc. and reenter it correctly for the root disk to be as it was before the restore and then you also need to put vfstab and dfstab back as it was.

With ufsdump/ufsrestore there is often no need to do most of this, it is also more flexible for restoring to an offline mirror.

let suppose we have small LAN , we must have NIS which hold informations about everything and it use DHCP , or even if we talk about home PC with Solaris 10 , it is better solution to use flash (TM) archive

Not really a big problem here. You can always have a latest copy of the system's explorer for reference. I don't think its really a tedious task

if this system is on zfs - you could even try zfs send/receive function, it`s really an lifesaver in some cases

It is in a disaster recovery ( site recovery), it takes too long. It depends on RPO and RTO amongst a whole bunch of other things, such a type of system, size of backup, restoing to dissimilar hardware etc.

One size rarely fits all and flash archives are not always suitable. I use them of some purposes but do not consider them to be a suitable overall backup mechanism and would not use them in a siuation where there is any possbility that they might have to be restored to different hardware.