Table of Contents

Preface. I. Introduction 1. Preparing for the Worst My Dad Was Right Developing a Disaster Recovery Plan Step 1: Define (Un)acceptable Loss Step 2: Back Up Everything Step 3: Organize Everything Step 4: Protect Against Disasters Step 5: Document What You Have Done Step 6: Test, Test, Test Put It All Together 2. Backing It All Up Don't Skip This Chapter! Why Should You Read This Book? How Serious Is Your Company About Backups? You Can Find a Balance Deciding What to Back Up Deciding When to Back Up Deciding How to Back Up Storing Your Backups Testing Your Backups Monitoring Your Backups Following Proper Development Procedures Unrelated Miscellanea Good Luck. II. Freely Available Filesystem Backup & Recovery Utilities 3. Native Backup & Recovery Utilities An Overview Backing Up with the dump Utility Restoring with the restore Utility Limitations of dump and restore Features to Check For Backing Up and Restoring with the cpio Utility Backing Up and Restoring with the tar Utility Backing Up and Restoring with the dd Utility Comparing tar, cpio, and dump How Do I Read This Volume? 4. Free Backup Utilities The hostdump.sh Utility The infback.sh, oraback.sh, and syback.sh Utilities A Really Fast tar Utility: star Recording Configuration Data: The SysAudit Utility Displaying Host Information: The SysInfo Utility Performing Remote Detections: The queso Utility Mapping Your Network: The nmap Utility AMANDA III. Commercial Filesystem Backup & Recovery Utilities 5. Commercial Backup Utilities What to Look For Full Support of Your Platforms Backup of Raw Partitions Backup of Very Large Filesystems and Files Simultaneous Backup of Many Clients to One Drive Simultaneous Backup of One Client to Many Drives Data Requiring Special Treatment Storage Management Features Reduction in Network Traffic Support of a Standard or Custom Backup Format Ease of Administration Security Ease of Recovery Protection of the Backup Index Robustness Automation Volume Verification Cost Vendor Conclusions. 6. High Availability What Is High Availability? HA Building Blocks Commercial HA Solutions The Impact of an HA Solution IV. Bare-Metal Backup & Recovery Methods. 7. SunOS/Solaris What About Fire? Homegrown Bare-Metal Recovery Recovering a SunOS/Solaris System. 8. Linux How It Works A Sample Bare-Metal Recovery. 9. Compaq True-64 Unix Compaq's btcreate Utility Homegrown Bare-Metal Recovery. 10. HP-UX HP's make_recovery Utility The copyutil Utility Using dump and restore 11. IRIX SGI's Backup and Restore Utilities System Recovery with Backup Tape Homegrown Bare-Metal Recovery 12. AIX IBM's mksysb Utility IBM's Sysback/6000 Utility System Cloning V. Database Backup & Recovery 13. Backing Up Databases Can It Be Done? Confusion: The Mysteries of Database Architecture The Muck Stops Here: Databases in Plain English What's the Big Deal? Database Structure An Overview of a Page Change What Can Happen to an RDBMS? Backing Up an RDBMS Restoring an RDBMS Documentation and Testing Unique Database Requirements. 14. Informix Backup & Recovery Informix Architecture Automating Informix Startup: The dbstart.informix.sh Script Protect the Physical Log, Logical Log, and sysmaster Which Backup Utility Should I Use? Physical Backups Without a Storage Manager: ontape Physical Backups with a Storage Manager: onbar Recovering Informix Logical Backups. 15. Oracle Backup & Recovery Oracle Architecture Physical Backups Without a Storage Manager Physical Backups with a Storage Manager Managing the Archived Redologs Recovering Oracle Logical Backups A Broken Record. 16. Sybase Backup & Recovery Sybase Architecture Physical Backups Without a Storage Manager Physical Backups with a Storage Manager Recovering Sybase Logical Backups An Ounce of Prevention . . . VI. Backup & Recovery Potpourri 17. ClearCase Backup & Recovery ClearCase Architecture VOB Backup and Recovery Procedures View Backup and Recovery Procedures Summary 18. Backup Hardware Choosing on a Backup Drive Using Backup Hardware Tape Drives Optical Drives Automated Backup Hardware Vendors Hardware Comparison 19. Miscellanea Volatile Filesystems Demystifying dump Gigabit Ethernet Disk Recovery Companies Yesterday Trust Me About the Backups

About the Author

W. Curtis Preston has specialized in designing backup and recovery systems for over six years, and has designed such systems for many environments, both large and small. The first environment that Curtis was responsible for went from 7 small servers to 250 large servers in just over two years, running Oracle, Informix, and Sybase databases and five versions of Unix. He started managing this environment with homegrown utilities and eventually installed the first of many commercial backup utilities. His passion for backup and recovery began with managing the data growth of this 24x7, mission-critical environment. Having designed backup systems for environments with small budgets, Curtis has developed a number of freely available tools, including ones that perform live backups of Oracle, Informix, and Sybase. He has ported these tools to a number of environments, including Linux, and they are running at companies around the world. Curtis is now a principal consultant for Collective Technologies, where they have developed a proven system for choosing a commercial backup utility when the environment and budget allow one to be purchased. This system has been used to select commercial backup systems for some of the world's largest environments, including a six terabyte Oracle database and one site with a total storage capacity of five petabytes. Once software and hardware selection is completed, they design and implement a complete system based on the customer's requirements. Curtis states that he could have never written the book without the use of the Collective Intellect(TM), or the "C.I." as he calls it. Collective Technologies' 400 consultants have administered every major operating system, and they support each other by freely sharing their "collective" experiences, referred to as the Collective Intellect(tm). While writing the book, Curtis asked the C.I. hundreds of questions that would have taken him years to research on his own. In a few cases, entire chapters were written by people who demonstrated expertise in a certain area. Curtis believes that the C.I. has made this a far better book than he ever envisioned.

Reviews

"In conclusion, this is a reference, that is so profoundly useful that you should start to use it routinely to underpin knowledge in yur day-to-day work. Before I read this book I only considered three manuals as key personal references to be kept close to hand at all times (all of them "O'Reillys"). They were: Practical UNIX and Internet Security by Garfinkel, Spafford and Schwartz, TCP/IP Network Administration by Hunt and Essential System Administration by Frisch I now have a fourth to add to this list. Wherever I go, whatever systems I end up administering, these four books will be nearby. I urge you to do the same." - Steven-Ashley Woltering, Ping (HP User Group Technical Journal), May