Re: tbtape and alternatives

scotts@prcrsi.com (Scott Sovereign) wrote: >Let me first say thank you for all of the responses so far. You have given >me some ideas to pursue and helpful hints. Let me apologize for the lack of >information, it was un-acceptable. >So hear are the details: > Hardware: HP9000 800 series > OS: HP-UX v9.X > Informix: Online v5.X >We are planning an OS upgrade over the next couple of months and then an >Informix upgrade this summer. Any solutions need to cheap and temporary >(because Informix changed their backup procedure) or needs to relevant to >the new system configuration. >Thanks again for the helpful words of wisdom. >Scott Sovereign >Interealty Corp >> >>I'm a new sys admin having to deal with Informix after coming from an >Oracle shop. The companies database backup procedures have struck me as odd >and inefficient. I am hoping that someone out their has a better suggestion. >> >>Right now, they are using tbtape to back up each dbase to a separate tape. >They have 3 dbs now, but plan to expand. The problem is that this takes 3 >tapes and 3 tape drives. Surely there is a better way. >> >>I've just started to investigate this, but was hoping for some helpful >insights. tbtape doesn't appear to allow you to backup to disk and I really >don't want to have to tbunload. Any ideas? >> >>Thanks in advance. >> We have been backing up tbtape to disk for some time now. You just point the tbconfig TAPEDEV to a disk file system that informix can write to. I take from your explanation you have 3 instances of infomrix running on the same box. You could consider putting all the database in one instance where one tbtape will back up all the databases at one time. Tbtape backups at the instance level and unlike oracle informix can have multiple database in one instance. My understanding if you are upgrading to 10.x on HP you will have to upgrade informix at the same time. I did not think informix was porting 5.x to the 10.x platform. You may want to check and make sure. It may work somewhat on 10.x but if it is not ported Informix will not support the product if it has problems. -- Tolly Brumbelow, Informix DBA email:tolly.brumbelow@bridge.bellsouth.com