directing onbar to disk?

I'm migrating an Informix enviroment to the datacenter of our parent company. They use Netbackup as the storage mgr (we use TSM). The Netbackup agent for Informix is installed and onbar configured to use it. Netbackup is taken down everyday from 1100-1300 for 'maintenance'. This, of course, causes any log backup to fail; if there is a batch job running, the logs will fill. Due to the above, I'd like to be able to direct onbar to write to disk first and let Netbackup take care of getting it off to tape later. We do this with TSM, using a 100GB disk pool. Our Oracle databases have a parameter (LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST) which allows you to specify a disk location for log offloads. I've not found anything in the Informix doc. that would allow this to be done using Onbar (maybe I've missed something?). Any help, as always, would be appreciated. Informix 9.40FC3 AIX 5.x

In onbar there is command to define the pool. In our case we are using ISM. The command for ISM to perform the backup of logical log to disk is : ism_add -device /usr/backup/ism_log -type file ism_op -label disk_for_log -device /usr/backup/ism_log -pool ISMLogs Where "file" tells the system that location will be to disk. /usr/backup/ism_log is a directory location where the logical log will be written to. Ensure that you have enough space else you will run into logical log full situation. Where disk_for_log is the label name link to /usr/backup/ism_log directory and it is for Logical log indicated by -pool ISMLogs In TSM there should be some command to do that, but I am not sure. Hope all this help. Best Regards, Dominic Seah 64616826 "GARY PRICE" <gprice@nationwideprovident.com> Sent by: ids-bounces@iiug.org 13-Nov-07 05:09 AM Please respond to ids@iiug.org To ids@iiug.org cc Subject directing onbar to disk? [10352] I'm migrating an Informix enviroment to the datacenter of our parent company. They use Netbackup as the storage mgr (we use TSM). The Netbackup agent for Informix is installed and onbar configured to use it. Netbackup is taken down everyday from 1100-1300 for 'maintenance'. This, of course, causes any log backup to fail; if there is a batch job running, the logs will fill. Due to the above, I'd like to be able to direct onbar to write to disk first and let Netbackup take care of getting it off to tape later. We do this with TSM, using a 100GB disk pool. Our Oracle databases have a parameter (LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST) which allows you to specify a disk location for log offloads. I've not found anything in the Informix doc. that would allow this to be done using Onbar (maybe I've missed something?). Any help, as always, would be appreciated. Informix 9.40FC3 AIX 5.x ******************************************************************************* Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.

Hi, having read other responses I try to complement the info a bit: ON-Bar will work only with a storage manager (SM), regardless whether the objects to back up are logs or dbspaces. Without the SM, ON-Bar will not be able to backup anything. This is because ON-Bar uses the XBSA only and there is no other way for ON-Bar to put the backup data anywhere else. I.e. there is no way to configure ON-Bar to write something to disk instead of sending the data to the SM via XBSA. If the SM is unavailable for some time during the day, then during that time backup with ON-Bar will not work. As you already experienced this means that logs will fill but not be backed up. The best solution to this problem (I think) is to have enough log space (sum of the size of all logical log files), so that you do not get into a "logs full" situation when logs cannot be backed up. That probably means that you have to add more (and possibly bigger) log files, so that operations can continue without "log full" during the SM outage - including the time it will take after the SM outage to catch up with backing up all the logs that filled in the meantime. The day time of the SM outage (11:00 - 13:00) may of course be unlucky - probably it is the least busy time for general backup tasks, but may well be the most busy time for transactions filling the logs. :-( Maybe it is possible to negotiate a different time window for this daily SM outage and thus to alleviate the problem somewhat? I would not recommend any other schemes to solve this problem as they will add significantly to the complexity of the restore procedure, which should be kept ASAP [ As Simple As Possible ;) ] because restore usually is a stressful situation and thus prone to user errors. [ Example schemes that I do not recommend include: - doing log backup using ontape instead of onbar. This involves complicated handling of log backup files during backup and restore and makes selection of valid backup during restore difficult (for ON-Bar) ... - Using a different SM for log backup (i.e. different from SM used for dbspace backup). E.g. ISM is local and independent of Netbackup availability, but this would require very complicated restore procedures with switching SM between physical and logical restore ... ] With IDS 11 you could use "ontape" to backup everything (dbspaces and logs) to directly disk without complicated backup file handling. But then "ontape" still does not offer parallel operation for dbspace backup. Regards, Martin -- Martin Fuerderer IBM Informix Development Munich, Germany Information Management IBM Deutschland GmbH Chairman of the Supervisory Board: Hans Ulrich Märki Board of Management: Martin Jetter (Chairman), Rudolf Bauer, Christian Diedrich, Christoph Grandpierre, Matthias Hartmann, Thomas Fell, Michael Diemer Corporate Seat: Stuttgart, Germany; Reg.-Gericht: Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB-Nr.: 14 562 WEEE-Reg.-Nr. DE 99369940 ids-bounces@iiug.org wrote on 12.11.2007 22:09:02: > I'm migrating an Informix enviroment to the datacenter of our parent company. > They use Netbackup as the storage mgr (we use TSM). The Netbackup agent for > Informix is installed and onbar configured to use it. Netbackup is taken down > everyday from 1100-1300 for 'maintenance'. This, of course, causes any log > backup to fail; if there is a batch job running, the logs will fill. > > Due to the above, I'd like to be able to direct onbar to write to disk first > and let Netbackup take care of getting it off to tape later. We do this with > TSM, using a 100GB disk pool. Our Oracle databases have a parameter > (LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST) which allows you to specify a disk location for log > offloads. I've not found anything in the Informix doc. that would allow this > to be done using Onbar (maybe I've missed something?). > > Any help, as always, would be appreciated. > > Informix 9.40FC3 > AIX 5.x > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum.

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