[SunHELP] Help with backup (was: using dd)

[Edward Chase]

OK, I guess my method isn't quite what I was hoping for...

Here's my scenario, I've got a machine that will become critical to our 
operations here and I need to have some redundancy and good backups.  I've 
been working with Solaris and Linux for several years, but don't claim to 
be a Unix guru.  Due to what I do know, I've been stuck at least for now 
with administering the college's new administrative machine.  It will be 
our Oracle/Banner machine.  These names might mean something to some of you.

Here's the machine's filesystem / disk layout.  I'm sure that some of you 
may cringe at this, but I was not given any guidance as to how big 
filesystems needed to be.  The machine has 2 18GB drives.  I have mounted 
c0t10s0s0 as /, it's size is approx 17GB.  The other GB is swap.  Drive 2 
(c0t11s0) is partitioned the same way.  My first thought was to mirror the 
two 17GB partitions, but I can't because Solstice Disk Suite won't mirror 
the / partition.  I also have an A1000 array with (12) 18GB drives in 
it.  I have created a RAID 5 filesystem with 11 of the drives, reserving 
the 12th as a hot spare using Raid Manager.  I have mounted this array at 
/array1.  The Oracle installation is sitting on the A1000.  The OS is 
solely on the first internal drive.

Now here's what I was thinking about backups.  (I've got a single DLT tape 
drive at the moment.)  It's looking like I got about 1.5GB on the first 
drive and 8GB on the A1000.  So no problem with the single tape drive.  I 
want to do full backups every time for now.  Using ufsdump was 
recommended.  Since it seems that I won't be doing mirroring, I was 
thinking that I could create a snapshot of the / filesystem from the first 
drive onto the second drive.  This is why I was thinking about using 
dd.  Then I would backup the second drive and the array (after shutting 
down the Oracle server and it's related other processes) to tape.  Once the 
tape backup was finished, I'd have the Oracle server and it's related 
processes start back up again.  This should all be done via a cron'd script.

Right now I'm not sure if this is the best way to go.  My dd command is now 
at the 2 hour mark.

Any suggestions on how do deal with these backups?



At 11:19 AM 2/6/2001 -0800, steve price wrote:
>dd isn't a file copy, it's a block by block copy of
>the entire partition/file system specified.  if the s0
>partition is 17gb, it's copying, block by block, 17gb.
>  although a question begs to be asked, are you doing
>this in single user mode or not?
>//regards
>
>--- Edward Chase <echase at postoffice.providence.edu>
>wrote:
> > I'm working on developing a backup script for a
> > Solaris 2.7 box.
> >
> > The machine has 2 internal 18GB hard drives.
> > (c0d10t0 and c0d11t0)
> >
> > I am using the dd command for the first time in
> > hopes for a little
> > reduncancy and backup speed.  Here's my thoughts...
> >
> > Both drives are partitioned the same.  Right now,
> > I've issued the following
> > command:
> >
> >     dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t10d0s0 of=/dev/rdsk/c0t11d0s0
> >
> > I was thinking that this would create a quick
> > snapshot of one filesystem
> > from one drive to the other and then I was going to
> > run ufsdump from the
> > 2nd drive.  It's the / filesystem if that matters.
> >
> > I issued that command over an hour ago and it still
> > appears to be
> > running.  The partition is 17GB or so, but only has
> > 1.5GB of data in it.
> >
> > Should this be taking this long?  This machine is a
> > 4 CPU - E4500 w/ 1GB of
> > RAM.  Only the basic OS is running at the moment.

---------------------------------------------------------------
  Edward F. Chase III     |   echase at providence.edu
  Providence College      |   http://www.providence.edu
  Computer Services       |   http://studentweb.providence.edu
  Providence, RI  02918   |