jcn@aplvax.UUCP (John C. Noble) (12/22/86)
References: We have a Vax 11/780, Pyramid 98x, masscomp, several (5 or 6) Microvaxen, several disk based Suns, a Sun server for 10 or so diskless workstations, and a partridge in a pear tree, all running some version of unix. For some reason, we have a problem performing full and incremental disk backups for all these systems. :-) Since these systems are connected via ethernet, we currently perform a full dump once per week from the various small systems (different systems on different days) to the Pyramid and save these dumps on tape each morning. (The Vax and Pyramid are handled separately, using traditional backup procedures.) However, this solution is at best a temporary one, since there is no guarantee the free disk space on the Pyramid will last forever. In addition, this does not solve the incremental backup problem (though, a system similar to the full backup procedure could be implemented, using even more disk space). Maybe we could make the Pyramid a "dump server." I'm sure there are many other sites with similar configurations. How do you handle your backups? Do you let each machine be responsible for its own backups? Obviously, if you have slave labor (i.e, students) traditional backup problems may be satisfactory, though the tape storage problem would be considerable. Has anyone made use of the high density optical disk WORM drives? -- John Noble JHU/APL ...seismo!umcp-cs!aplcen!aplvax!jcn