LTO3 tape for mksysb

[cts123]

Hi Gurus,

I have two p550 server which are running on AIX 5.3. They are under HA. These servers are connected with a SAN swicth. All the file system storge are from DS4300 strorage unit.

We have one more server p-520 which is being used as a TSM server and this connected with the same SAN switch.

More over there is a IBM tape library which is having 5 no. LTO3 tape drives and all of them are connected with the same SAN switch.

In new P550 server, I can't locate any SCSI port hence I can't connect any external SCSI tape drive to take mksysb. Presently I am doing mksysb ( mkcd) through the DVD-RAM drive. But I don't trust the DVD-RAM media.

At present I don't ave any server which I can make NIM server. Can I configure the LTO3 tape drives to take mksysb for these three servers? How can I do that ?

Need some suggestion and the steps which are required to be followed.

TIA

Regards,
-Sam

 

[MoreFeo]

You can use TSM for System Backup and Recovery (SysBack). I've never used it, but as far as I know it lets you make mksysb to the TSM server and recover from it.

Take a look at this redbook:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp3705.pdf

(IBM Tivoli Storage Manager: Bare Machine Recovery for AIX with SYSBACK)

 

[khalidaaa]

Hi Sam, Long time no see

The best thing is to use TSM ofcourse but if that is not there then you can go for NIM master for mksysb images!

But now you say that you can't use NIM then i would think of remote mksysb thru rsh or ssh! you can keep LTO3 tape on one of the LPARs and then do remote mksysb on that LPAR! but of course you would have to change Tapes!

But i don't think this is a good solution any way!

Regards,
Khalid

 

[cts123]

Thanks MoreFeo & Khalid,

I will go through the pdf and will see if I can do something with sysback.

Khalid: I saw someting while googling. If you type "NIM Nutshell" in google, I found one pdf which may be usuful. Just wanted to review this on the steps which have mentioned in that NIM nutshell pdf.

If I can manage a NIM master, let see how it goes. Are the steps mentioned in that pdf good? To be honest I didn't try NIM master ever.

Thanks again.

Regards,

-Sam