Re: Please critique my backup practices

On Mar 20, 4:06 pm, "John Wallace" <johnwalla...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"tadamsmar" <tadams...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:26eb56f6-ec7b-42be-bf46-64def0b22f3e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





To do a backup, I pop a drive out of a shadowset, back it up and put
it back.

The problem is, I don't record the backup dates.

I have a incremental that runs every night that does record backup
dates.

If I had to restore, I would apply the last image and all the
incrementals after it.  But I guess I would get some extra files.

This is easy, I never have to shutdown, but what are the gotchas?

Note that if I am *planning* to do a restore I don't use incrementals,
I just use a fresh image backup.

I have never had to do an emergency image restore using incrementals.

Give the community some more background and you may get better answers.
Relevant practices may vary depending on what you're backing up (a system
disk, a generic data disk with various files on it, a "pure database" disk
with nothing on it except the database itself in which case it may have its
own backup tools...).

E.g. when I cared about backups, in a software development environment, it
was always a goal to have files on at least two sets of media (even files
which may only have existed for a couple of days), so that if there was a
problem and one set of media wasn't usable for whatever reason, the relevant
files would still be recoverable from another set. This was done by
abandoning the usual "incremental" or "differential" schemes and doing a
weekly full backup and a daily backup with files created in the previous two
(or do I mean three) days, so each new file would go on the following day's
daily backup, AND the daily one after that. Others might have a "version
management" tool in place to achieve the same end result, which might have
changed the backup requirement. One backup strategy does not necessarily fit
all, not comfortably anyway.

Usually the only time you need completely shut down VMS for doing a backup
is if you want a clean image backup of your system disk - always assuming
that any applications you may have active can be persuaded to close any
files they may have opened, without shutting VMS down. For example, BASEstar
(which you have previously mentioned) sometimes has lots of global section
files, which should disappear (or at least close cleanly) when you shut down
BASEstar. Then again, some BASEstar installations I have known have needed
BASEstar running 24x7x365. Keeping the system up and running was more
important than the small risk of global sections being inconsistent on the
backup (generally the global sections could be recreated correctly and
simply from other data within BASEstar). Other applications may not all be
so well behaved. You need to understand your needs and relevant application
behaviours.

Regards
John- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I am running VMS 7.3.2 on a DS10. I have shadowed system disks (2).
This is about backing up a system disk.

The app that runs on it is designed to come up clean after a crash.

.

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