AIX Disaster Recovery

[7280]

Hi,
I have 4 lpar on 2 pseries 570.
These systems are running aix 5.3 with applications like oracle, websphere and emc documentum.
We need to do disaster recovery for these systems which, unfortunately, isn't live. So everything will be backuped to tape and then the new systems should be brought up from tape.
What is the best way for recovering the operating system + environment (hostname, network configuration, volume groups....).
Now on the tape I have the iso image of rootvg generated by mksysb + mkcd commands. Is this enough to recover the system?
Please advice as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance!

 

[mrn]

you need a mksysb + savevg + o/s media

Mike

"Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters."

 

[khalidaaa]

I would say mksysb + backup commands

mksysb for rootvg and other system files and backup command for other data filesystems

Regards,
Khalid

 

[7280]

Hi,
thanks for the responses.
Is savevg essential or I can backup the other volume groups with commands like tar?
Or lets think about the faster restore procedure.

I have also another problem. Two of the four lpar are in cluster hacmp/es.
In DR I'm not sure I'll have the cluster. Is this a problem from os point of view? I mean, my mksysb image is on a clustered system while in dr there isn't cluster.

Thanks again.

 

[mrn]

A savevg will create the filesystems / directory tree / etc... which IMO is easier than going down the manual path. HACMP shouldn't be a problem it'll be like a one node down situation. Are you DR'ing to stand alone servers or HMC controlled server if HMC i'd backup Critical Console Data.



Mike

"Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters."

 

[7280]

I still don't know what kind of hardware I will have (maybe the same, maybe other).
But why do I need the HMC backup?
Even if the new systems have an HMC, it just have the configuration of the new servers like disks, controllers and so on.. is it right or am I missing something?
The most important thing is to have AIX OS media.

About savevg you'll right, I will implement it immediately, it will save me time.

Last thing. Since now I'm doing iso images (mksysb + mkcd) these will not be bootable from tape? In order to use them I need to burn the image on a dvd media. So I should not delete the mksysb file (now after I create the dvd image, I delete the mksysb file).

Thanks again.

 

[RMGBELGIUM]

1. mksysb of your system
2. if mksysb is not bootable, get the AIX cd's base level of your maintenance level
3. if no tape device available,no baselevel AIX cd's available, setup a NIM server, you will allways be able to boot from that ...
Concerning a data vg , savevg or individual FS backup ( through backup command )

rgds,


R.

 

[7280]

Hi,
still a doubt.
Now my backups are done on a windows share that is mounted via cifs. Then these files are backup'd on tape by a proprietary application (Brightstor).

On the new servers how I can access these backup'd data? Is it possible from HMC to access these data?
I really don't know how to solve this problem.

Thanks.

 

[khalidaaa]

So you do your backups using a Windows server?

well, you can use your old startigy (windows share backup) but you can't do this from the HMC! you will have to mount whatever shares from the LPARs themselves to the windows machine, then do the backup as done previously.

Regards,
Khalid

 

[7280]

I have mounted a windows share (that is the backup server) on AIX via cifs.
Then I'm making my backups to that share and from there they're moved to tape.

In DR I will have an hmc that managed 4 lpar WITHOUT OS.
So how can I restore those servers?
Do I need to:
- restore to a windows share
- make dvd
- boot from dvd
Or it is possible to boot directly from that share? I don't think so, in this case I need NIM.

Thanks again