Re: Multiple Archive Tapes

Richard Stanford wrote: > > On 9 May 1997, Harold Trammel wrote: > > > Our Online system is getting new data 16-20 hours out of each day. We > > cannot afford to take users off the database to let us do backups (that > > is one reason why we have Online). The problem is that in the 1-2 hours > > it takes for us to make one backup, the users have entered new data and > > the second tape will not contain the same data. In addition, the second > > backup will remove the logical log(s) that will have been created > > between the first and second backup. This can cause problems with > > restoration of the Online system. > > > > I cannot add a second tape drive for several reasons. How do others > > solve this problem? > > Do you have enough disk space to do Level-0 to disk followed by dumping > the L-0 to tape (second step twice)? One advantage to this is that going > to disk saves a lot of the time in which your logs may fill up. > > -Richard You message does not make it clear but I assume that you are worried about a second volume of the archive set and not a second archive. If that is the case you have no worries. When Informix starts the archive, it looks at an internal time stamp and any updates that happen after that time will not get put on the tape, therefore the second volume will be consistant with the first. If you are actually doing a second archive, then I suggest that you copy the primary tape instead of running another archive.