Thanks to:
Claudio Cuestas <claudio@kivex.com>
Rasana Atreya <rasana_atreya@hotmail.com>
Tim Carlson <tim@santafe.edu>
Steve Maher <marzconsulting@hotmail.com>
Robert S. Linzell <linzell@neptunesci.com>
"Litwin, Gary" <gary.litwin@fsbti.com>
David B. Harrington <dharringt@deq.state.va.us>
Bismark Espinoza <bismark@alta.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Consensus: ufsdump
Detailed individual replies
---------------------------
1. My take on this is, if you are trying to backup the data locally on
your machine, first determine was is the total disk space, then I
would suggest to use gzip not tar, due to the fact that tar does
not offer any type of compression, aside from backing up data is
also good to compress the data so it takes less space on the device.
To utilize a backup software and tape drives you may wanna look
into Solstice Networker and use either dlt tape drive + tape or
other type of data backup/revovery device.
2. With ufsdump it is easier to restore selectively. With tar you
cannot pick and choose what you want to restore.
3. We always use ufsdump. Stay away from tar and dd. For that amount
of data, check out the HP DDS3 tape drive. We have three of them
and think they are great.
4. ufsdump works well for us.
ufsdump 0cuf /dev/rmt/0n /filesystem
this will do a full dump to the default no-rewind tape device. Must
use mt command to move from one filesystem dump to another.
5. I recommend ufsdump, primarily because of ease of restoring
files/filesystems and ease of use with remote tape drives (no
remote shell call required). Also, ufsrestore is much friendlier
than dd or tar to extract off of tape, and in an emergency, this
aspect is _crucial_. Tar and dd (AFAIK) cannot extract entire
filesystems (in a single, simple command), which ufsrestore can
(this is the word of experience!). Also, tar and dd are
notoriously difficult to use for extracting particular individual
files (or multiple files). GNU tar is better than standard tar for
remote tape operations and for single/multiple file extractions,
FWIW. If using a remote tape drive, you'll need to set the
/.rhosts (and probably /etc/hosts.equiv) entries on all involved
machines. HTH.
6. I have a rather large site, and use Legato Networker for backups,
however this is a pretty expensive solution.
If the data is on a single partition, one of my preferred ways is
to use ufsdump:
ufsdump 0f - /directory_name | dd of=/dev/rmt/0cbn obs=32768
After using ufsdump I usually do an interactive test restore to
make sure all went well.
7. I use Solaris Backup (SBU) which is a very expensive product, but
allows automatic backup of several clients, and your chouce of
files/directories.
Recovery is a piece of cake, to the point that you can recover
(with a GUI) down to individual file level.
Ufsdump and tar are good, and I use them sometimes, too.
8. Get a 8mm tape drive and backup using ufsdump.
Orginal question
----------------
Dear gurus,
We have ~8.5GB data that needs to backup to tape on a bi-weekly
basis on a Solaris 2.6. We are wondering what would be the most efficient
way to accomplish this task and to retore from tape, if necessary. Does
anybody have any comments on tar, dd or ufsdump etc.?
Regards,
Janet Leung, ISD USC, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0251
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:14:09 CDT