Re: Informix Online backups using CA-UniCenter

As CA explained it to us a while back, Informix needs to think that your tape is ridiculously large, i.e. as large as your entire database or more. When the drive gets to the end of the tape, Unicenter senses it, unmounts the tape, puts a label on the next tape, and lets informix continue writing. Informix is unaware any of this has happened. This also makes the tapes useless for restoring if Unicenter cant be used, say in a disaster recovery scenario. I also don't know how big the tape size can be and how it is stored internally. Based on how informix inconsistently handles the high order rowid bit, I wouldnt bet the farm on it.