Backup Options

Hello All. I am beginning to research our options with regard to Informix database backups. We are running IDS 7.31 and 9.40 on 45 servers running Sun, HP UX, and AIX. For many years, we have been using BMC's SQL-BackTrack as our storage manager with On-Bar for our backups. Over the years, we've written scripts and standardized our use of SQL-BackTrack and we have been very pleased with how it has worked. Unfortunately, my company decided we are paying too much for SQL-BackTrack licensing and they have asked me to find an alternative - a free alternative. I reckon I have two options: On-Tape to disk or ISM. I already have scripts for On-Tape to disk and of course On-Tape is a solid tool. The downside is that we give up compression, point-in-time restores, and backing up dbspaces in parallel. A year or two ago I played with ISM on one server and actually got it to work. It was much more cumbersome to configure and maintain, but we were able to get it to work. The downside is that (as I understand it) it is limited to four dbspaces in parallel and it is a crippled version of Legato. This last point is bad for us because we use Legato for filesystem backups. There is a Networker client installed on all our servers and the configuration information for the Networker client interferes with the configuration of ISM - at least that is what I understand. (The server I played with a year or two ago did not have a Networker client installed.) Also, many of our servers are running multiple Informix instances which ISM does not support (I've read). It is also common to have dbspaces of 60 or 70 GB, as some instances are a bit over 1 TB. I've also read that there is a 2 GB dbspace limit with ISM. Years ago we looked at Legato's Business Suite which was supposed to provide a storage manager for On-Bar. As I recall, we could never get it to work properly. Furthermore, if Business Suite is still around, (or if EMC is now offering something else) it would probably not be free. Does anyone have any suggestions or any other possible alternatives? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Rob Schmitz Embarq Data Management rob.b.schmitz@embarq.com www.embarq.com

Schmitz, Rob B[EQ] wrote: > Hello All. > > I am beginning to research our options with regard to Informix database > backups. We are running IDS 7.31 and 9.40 on 45 servers running Sun, HP UX, > and AIX. For many years, we have been using BMC's SQL-BackTrack as our storage > manager with On-Bar for our backups. Over the years, we've written scripts and > standardized our use of SQL-BackTrack and we have been very pleased with how > it has worked. Unfortunately, my company decided we are paying too much for > SQL-BackTrack licensing and they have asked me to find an alternative - a free > alternative. > > I reckon I have two options: On-Tape to disk or ISM. I already have scripts > for On-Tape to disk and of course On-Tape is a solid tool. The downside is > that we give up compression, point-in-time restores, and backing up dbspaces > in parallel. A year or two ago I played with ISM on one server and actually > got it to work. It was much more cumbersome to configure and maintain, but we > were able to get it to work. The downside is that (as I understand it) it is > limited to four dbspaces in parallel and it is a crippled version of Legato. > This last point is bad for us because we use Legato for filesystem backups. > There is a Networker client installed on all our servers and the configuration > information for the Networker client interferes with the configuration of ISM > - at least that is what I understand. (The server I played with a year or two > ago did not have a Networker client installed.) Also, many of our servers are > running multiple Informix instances which ISM does not support (I've read). It > is also common to have dbspaces of 60 or 70 GB, as some instances are a bit > over 1 TB. I've also read that there is a 2 GB dbspace limit with ISM. > > Years ago we looked at Legato's Business Suite which was supposed to provide a > storage manager for On-Bar. As I recall, we could never get it to work > properly. Furthermore, if Business Suite is still around, (or if EMC is now > offering something else) it would probably not be free. > > Does anyone have any suggestions or any other possible alternatives? > > Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Why not use ontape to a directory* and let the Networker file-system backup get it onto tape? Sure you lose PIT, but how often do you use that anyway? *New option in 11. -- Cheers, Obnoxio The Clown http://obotheclown.blogspot.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by OpenProtect(http://www.openprotect.com), and is believed to be clean.