Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!pacbell!att!ucbvax!LBL.GOV!nagy%warner.hepnet
From: nagy%warner.hepnet@LBL.GOV (Frank J. Nagy, VAX Wizard & Guru)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Backup Operations Procedures
Message-ID: <880628134713.276004ae@LBL.Gov>
Date: 28 Jun 88 20:47:13 GMT
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    The Fermilab Research Division Electrical/Electronics Department
Controls Group operates a Local Area VAXCluster consisting of two 
MicroVAXes and (currently) 6 VAXStations.  There are currently
4 RA81s consisting of a system disk and two disks for user files and
data (we are a software and hardware development environment).  The
4th RA81's file have been moved or unloaded in order to turn it into
a second system disk since we are converting our LAVC to dual boot nodes
in order to support growth from 8 nodes to 23-24 nodes in the next month.
     
    We currently have about 1 GByte of active files on these 4 RA81s.
We plan to expand the file system this year by at least 50%.  Backup
is done with a pair of DigiData Gigastores connected to the two
MicroVAXes.  These are helical scan tape systems using VHS tape cartridges
to store up to 2.5 GBytes each.

    All backups are done online with the systems live by batch jobs.
The current schedules are:

	- Every night do a /IMAGE backup of all disks.  Currently this
	  is done with a pair of RA81s to each Gigastore.  The system
	  manager comes in on weekday mornings and changes out the
	  cartridges.  The backup jobs run at 3 AM and take about 1.5
	  hours.

	- At 12:00, an incremental backup is done of the entire file
	  system onto a TK50 on the boot node.

	- At 18:00, an incremental backup is done of the entire file
	  system onto a TK50 on the other MicroVAX node.

The incremental backups are just fluff (to some extent), but have helped
when someone has deleted a file in the past.  Our basic backup philosophy
is "hands off"; we have no operators to mount tapes, so we have acquired
equipment so we don't need same.  Doing so allowed us to change our backup
schedules.

ORIGINALLY, we did backups to TK50s.  A weekly /IMAGE backup was done
(again online with users on the system) Monday morning and afternoon.
Incrementals were done nightly by a 3 AM batch job and the TK50s changed
on weekday mornings.  Things are soo much easier now with the Gigastores.

= Frank J. Nagy   "VAX Guru & Wizard"
= Fermilab Research Division EED/Controls
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