msellow@cuc1.UUCP (Marlon Sellow) (04/20/89)
The computer I use is a Sequent Symmentry with 1 gigabyte of storage. The previous SA used a daily dump of entire file systems to do backup. As the new SA, I want to try something that will be easier to recover specific items--We have Oracle--instead of what restoring from a dump would require. Also, we currently use the large tapes (2400ft, 1600bpi). All suggestions appreciated. "All the world's a computer and all the women and men are bit players." P.C. Shakespeare
gentry@kcdev.UUCP (Art Gentry) (04/21/89)
In article <2072@cuc1.UUCP>, msellow@cuc1.UUCP (Marlon Sellow) writes: > The computer I use is a Sequent Symmentry with 1 gigabyte of storage. The > previous SA used a daily dump of entire file systems to do backup. As the new > SA, I want to try something that will be easier to recover specific items--We > have Oracle--instead of what restoring from a dump would require. Also, we > currently use the large tapes (2400ft, 1600bpi). > The way we have done our backups for several years on 20+ UNIX systems is thus: 1) we maintain 2 complete sets of backups, rotating each set on subsequent backups. These are complete copies of all file systems with one file system on each tape. This makes finding a file much easier than going through an entire set of tapes made for an entire system. These tapes are cut on every Saturday. 2) we also maintain 2 sets of daily backups (same rotation as above). These daily tapes contain all files that have been modified in the last 24 hours. The daily bu run is taken care of by a cron job, so all we have to do is make sure the right tapes are mounted before we go home at night. Both tapes (weekly & daily) are cpio archive tapes, which makes it very easy to retrieve any individual file or directory of files from any tape. Art $include <stddiscl.h>
sechrest@uther.CS.ORST.EDU (John Sechrest) (04/25/89)
We have invested in a Exabyte 8mm 2.3Gb tape system. It connects to our suns and we backup over 25 systems via the network. It seems to work well. It runs on SCSI, so it would be possible to support it on the Sequent. I heard rumors that a couple of people were building drivers for the Sequent, but we have a system up and working, so we stopped looking. It really makes things go smoother when you can backup a system on one tape. You can do nightly full dumps if you like .... All automated. A real joy. john sechrest