RE: Does anyone shut down for system disk backup any more?

From: Bochnik, William J (William_Bochnik_at_acml.com)
Date: 11/06/03 

Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 08:42:31 -0500

not to split hairs, but unless you do a periodic restore to another disk,
you are always reasonably sure your backups are ok, not 100%. Things
happen. Tapes go bad, hidden issues with the backup or restore procedures
go unnoticed, etc.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Rechtman [mailto:michael.rechtman@hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:09 AM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: Does anyone shut down for system disk backup any more?

JF Mezei wrote:
>
> > >> An interesting experiment would be to find an old disk with an
> > >> easily accessible "write protect" button on the outside. Boot up
> > >> VMS from such a disk, get your applications going (yes, even if
> > >> they are on a different disk), and then write protect your system
> > >> disk.
>
> The audit server would get mighty mad at not being able to write its
> logs and probably freeze the system. OPCOM woudl also get mighty mad
> with inability to write to operator.log, and the queue manager would
> also complain bitterly. You woudln't have a happy family :-)

I've tried something similar - actually I was trying to build a minimal
OpenVMS system on a CD - If SYSUAF.DAT is not writeable you cannot login.
SYSUAF is also a file I have seen corrupted after a restore from backup done
with /IGNORE=INTERLOCK. You always have _some_ applications on the system
disk - they're put there when you install OpenVMS. They're just not 3-rd
party. To quiesce the system disk sufficiently to close all
files/applications you might as well shutdown

Basic question has already been asked: If your system is critical enough to
be up 24x365, then surely you should be _entirely_ sure of the quality of
your backups, not 'reasonably' sure? Of course you could always restore a
previous backup, and and one previous to that ... until you hit a good one,
with a decreasing risk of failure. But it sounds inconvenient and open to
error.

Mike 

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Usual disclaimer: All opinions are mine alone, perhaps not even that.
Mike Rechtman                            *rechtman@tzora.co.il*
Kibbutz Tzor'a.                          Voice (home): 972-2-9908337  
  "20% of a job takes 80% of the time, the rest takes another 80%"
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