IDS Forum

Re: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR

Posted By: Tanya Gallegos
Date: Friday, 1 July 2005, at 1:51 p.m.

In Response To: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR (TANYA GALLEGOS)

Thank you for such quick responses.

I would like to upgrade Informix but have no say in the decision. The
current storage manager is Legato which is unsupported at our level and is
being retired. Also because there is no staff to mount tapes at its
location.
I inherited this system about a year ago, I have a manual procedure to
resync the secondary by faking it out to believe its the primary, then
legato would use the level 0 and log files and HDR would finish the resync
from the buffers.

I would feel more comfortable staying with onbar where I know the
procedure works, but am not sure of all the parameters needed to change
from tape to disk.
The onconfig on both servers have the tapedev and ltapedev hardcoded with
the legato drives, I hoped all I needed to change were those parameters
to point to a file on the server in my backup directory, use scripts to
break the archive into 2 gig files and write the logical logs.
If a resync was necessary I could ftp the files to the secondary to do the
restore. It doesn't sound like it will be as easy as that.

Legato will be removed from the server so I need to find another storage
manager. TSM will be used to backup the filesystems, it's possible I can
install sqlbacktrack to work with onbar. I haven't done that before but I
heard it can be done.

I'm trying to setup a test instance(standalone) but am having little
success. I don't have access to the original software and key to do a
fresh install.
I have dbas helping with the scripts but don't have a place to test.
Without a 2 server hdr test system, I wouldn't be able to do a legit test
anyway.
I'm a little nervous about putting it on production on the fly.


Tanya Gallegos
IBM Global Services - Qwest
Production DBA
(801) 237-6547
tgalleg@us.ibm.com



Martin Fuerderer <MARTINFU@de.ibm.com>
07/01/2005 07:14 AM

To
Tanya Gallegos/Salt Lake City/IBM@IBMUS
cc
forum.subscriber@iiug.org, ids@iiug.org
Subject
Re: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR [5321]






Hi,

since you now use ON-Bar, with which storage manager do you use it ?

- ON-Bar:
- can do backup and restore in parallel, which generally will be faster
than serial ontape.
- can work unattended, especially helpful for log backup.
- you have to use a storage manager.
- you can use ISM, but it doesn't do remote operation, so restore
for secondary (HDR) will be "imported restore" which is somewhat
complicated.

- ontape:
- no storage manager needed.
- transfer of backup to secondary and restore is simple.
- only serial operation, nothing is parallel.
- continuous log backup with ontape will (periodically) halt and require
user interactivity to change tapes (LTAPEDEV).
- 2 GB limit for files may hit you (I see you're already aware of this).

- changes necessary:

- switching from current ON-Bar to ontape:
- you probably backup the logs via ALARMPROGRAM and ON-Bar (now),
so you should change ALARMPROGRAM parameter in onconfig file
(e.g. from .../log_full.sh to .../no_log.sh).
This change will require a server restart, but not a long down time.
- alternatively you can directly edit the shell script currently
configured in
ALARMPROGRAM. This can be done without server down time.
Though eventually you should change ALARMPROGRAM to reflect
the reality, but that can be done during some other, planned down
time.
- LTAPE... and TAPE... onconfig parameters are mainly used by ontape
only. The only significant value for the server is, whether LTAPEDEV

is
"/dev/null" or not. Since you do not have "/dev/null" now, you can
change
LTAPEDEV to any value (other than "/dev/null") without effect on
server.
That means LTAPE... and TAPE... parameters can be changed without
requiring server down time.

- switching ON-Bar from backup to tape to backup to disk:
- I've not done this particular thing before, but I think it will
require
changes in storage manager only. Therefore no server down time
should be required.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas.

As already recommended by others, I strongly advice to
test things, possibly with a small HDR pair of test instances.
Include the restore for secondary in your tests, so you get a good
picture (and a step-by-step procedure) of how to do that in your
particular environment.

Regards,
Martin
--

forum.subscriber@iiug.org wrote on 01.07.2005 00:08:22:
> I have IDS 2000 9.21.UC4 running on SUNOS 5.8. I'm using HDR, currently

have onbar running for nightly
> level 0 archive and logical log backups. Its writing to a small
unsupported Legatto tape drive.
>
> I need to change the Backup and Recovery strategy from tape to disk and
am looking for the best/easiest transition.
> I have disk space now, but not sure if it will be better to switch to
ontape or stay with onbar and use ISM.
> I have limited down time, no test system and need to be sure I can back
out if necessary.
>
> We're working on scripts to break the archive into 2 gig files and
> an alarmprogram script.
> I believe I need to change the tapedev and ltapedev parameters and
utilize the ISM parameters in both onconfig
> files. Short down time required.
>
> If anyone has some advice or direction it would be greatly appreciated.

Messages In This Thread

• IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
  TANYA GALLEGOS -- Thursday, 30 June 2005, at 6:08 p.m.
  • RE: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
    Support Informix -- Friday, 1 July 2005, at 2:07 a.m.
  • Re: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
    Martin Fuerderer -- Friday, 1 July 2005, at 9:20 a.m.
    • Re: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
      Ravi T -- Friday, 1 July 2005, at 11:05 a.m.
  • Re: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
    Tanya Gallegos -- Friday, 1 July 2005, at 1:51 p.m.
    • RE: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
      mosserp@wellsfargo.com -- Friday, 1 July 2005, at 6:42 p.m.
    • RE: IDS 9.21 Backup/Recover strat with HDR
      Tanya Gallegos -- Thursday, 7 July 2005, at 3:43 p.m.

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