Zlatko,
Thanks for the information. I do realise that the AIX mirroring is
totally transparent from the user (and TSM) point of view. That is not
really my question though. The current backup procedure is (roughly)
(i) Stop all clients using the filesystems
(ii) Do a mksysb
(iii) Break off one of the mirror copies
(iv) Re-mount the broken mirror copies as phantoms that we backup
(v) Allow clients to access disks
(vi) Backup the broken mirrors
(vii) Re-sync the mirrors
The reason we do this is to minimise the downtime for the machine
and to allow a backup to continue whilst clients can use the filesystems.
Effectively we are taking a point-in-time snapshot of the filesystems.
I guess that what I was asking is whether there is anything in the TSM
client (in terms of smarts) to allow it to do something similar.
Am I right in thinking that the client will rely on the filesystem not
changing underneath it?
If we cannot, then we will just have to wear the downtime.
Thanks for that,
Steve Greatbanks
ps - You are of course right about varyon/varyoff working at the VG, rather
than the LV level.
-----Original Message-----
From: Zlatko Krastev/ACIT [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, 23 October 2001 12:28 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Client and AIX mirrored disks...
Stephen,
there is no any need to vary off the logical volumes. Moreover you cannot
vary off the LVs but only the whole VG. And you have no access to logical
volumes in varied off VG, only to the physical disks.
TSM itself does not care is you LV mirrored or not. The B/A client accesses
files on the filesystem created on top of the LV or makes a backup of whole
LV as a single raw data file using image backup. The TDP products access
the data through application APIs and again do not care about mirroring
done by the application or operating system.
The only products which do use something similar to this "split mirror and
backup" procedure are TDP products for ESS and EMC Symmetrix.
Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant
"Greatbanks, Stephen P" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 22.10.2001 07:18:04
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc:
Subject: Client and AIX mirrored disks...
Hi,
I am something of a TSM beginner, and this is my first post here
too, so please excuse
any obvious mistakes on my part.
I am in the position of having to implement a TSM backup solution
for our client. This is (in the first instance at least) an all AIX shop.
I've read all the redbooks, and am pretty confident that I know (more or
less!) what needs to be done. However, I would appreciate some feedback
regarding AIX disk mirroring and how this affects the client-side of the
set-up.
Without going into too much detail about our current config, are
there any special considerations regarding the client if you are using AIX
LVM-level mirroring? Our current backups use sysback/sbom which jumps
through a number of hoops to break a copy off the (triple) mirror, which is
then backed up whilst work continues. For simplicity, as much as anything
else, I would far prefer to not have to do this kind of thing as part of
the backup procedure. Is there anything in the TSM client which assists in
the backup of mirrored volumes? Do the logical volumes have to be varied on
(just wondering if varying them off is an option) for TSM to back them up?
Does anybody have any experience with this kind of thing?
Thanks in advance,
Steve Greatbanks
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