Backup choices

Good morning everyone. After fighting with problems with our informix 7.3x loads last night steming from our backup procedures, I am coming to the collective knowledge and experience of all of IIUG for recommendations. Back before I was DBA, informix was not a production database server on my campus. As such, the backup scripts that are run each night are in fact just running dbexports to a file which will then get backed up by our Veritas Netbackup server by picking up the plain files in this directory structure. Well, we added a very large datawarehouse table into our extracted tables that we load into informix each night. This table (when exported as part of the backup run) chewed up all remaining disk space on the disk subsystem that informix and the SIS system runs on. As such, when a few of the early morning extracts from the mainframe world made its way to the server, they could not be transfered, or re-loaded in their entirety. Long story made short....this 1 major table for us with over 20000+ rows had something short of 2000 rows actually reload. Not good for me since I was doing Firewall maintenance when the Java Developers figured out something was really wrong with the table. We cleaned up the disk space, and reloaded day old data on this particular table. Yeah! Well, now that there is attention on the informix database installation, I have ample leverage (i think) to push through getting a veritas license for Informix or some other software like that. At this moment in time, I have never seen Veritas client for any Database server in action. Does anyone have any thoughts on the Veritas suite when it comes to doing direct backups from the database to the backup server? Do any of you have any experience with other 3rd party software or is everyone moving to On-bar? Does the veritas client work with both IDS2000 (informix9) and Informix 7.x? How bad is the pricing on the client? Any and all comments are welcome as I am still working on building a new database area that is more pproduction oriented then we are currently. Thanks again Scott Fendley

Scott, I have used onbar in conjunction with both ADSM and Veritas Netbackup. Both work fine, they have their own unique differences of course, but basically they both work well. Right now, I am using Veritas/Onbar on numerous Sun Solaris machines against both 9.x and 7.x databases. It works fine for both. As far as pricing goes, don't hold me to it, but I think they price the backup clients based on a machine tier designation. Tier 2 (large servers) costing somewhere around 15k per server, Tier 1 would be somewhat less. But this is just my recollection. In article <9327i6$911$1@news.xmission.com>, Scott Fendley <dsf@comp.uark.edu> wrote: > > > Good morning everyone. After fighting with problems with our informix > 7.3x loads last night steming from our backup procedures, I am coming to > the collective knowledge and experience of all of IIUG for > recommendations. > > Back before I was DBA, informix was not a production database server on my > campus. As such, the backup scripts that are run each night are in fact > just running dbexports to a file which will then get backed up by our > Veritas Netbackup server by picking up the plain files in this directory > structure. > > Well, we added a very large datawarehouse table into our extracted tables > that we load into informix each night. This table (when exported as part > of the backup run) chewed up all remaining disk space on the disk > subsystem that informix and the SIS system runs on. As such, when a few > of the early morning extracts from the mainframe world made its way to the > server, they could not be transfered, or re-loaded in their entirety. > Long story made short....this 1 major table for us with over 20000+ rows > had something short of 2000 rows actually reload. Not good for me since I > was doing Firewall maintenance when the Java Developers figured out > something was really wrong with the table. We cleaned up the disk space, > and reloaded day old data on this particular table. Yeah! > > Well, now that there is attention on the informix database installation, I > have ample leverage (i think) to push through getting a veritas license > for Informix or some other software like that. > > At this moment in time, I have never seen Veritas client for any Database > server in action. Does anyone have any thoughts on the Veritas suite when > it comes to doing direct backups from the database to the backup server? > Do any of you have any experience with other 3rd party software or is > everyone moving to On-bar? Does the veritas client work with both IDS2000 > (informix9) and Informix 7.x? How bad is the pricing on the client? > > Any and all comments are welcome as I am still working on building a new > database area that is more pproduction oriented then we are currently. > > Thanks again > > Scott Fendley > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/