Deferred level 1 restore?

Here's a good one. (IDS9.30, HP-UX 11i) We're moving to a different facility and new hardware (same basic machine & OS) at the end of the month and in order to minimise the time taken to transfer our 180Gb instance and allow the users unfettered access up to the very last minute (god we're so good to them) we'd like to do the following using OnBar: 1) Run a level-0 backup on the Thursday night from the old production server (currently this takes about 7 hours). 2) Restore this to the new server at the new facility (L0 restore time at present is about 12 hours end-to-end). 3) Leave the new server in limbo while the users have continued access to the old box. 4) Friday night kick the users and then take a level-1 of the old production box - we've tested this and it takes about 2.5 hours. 5) Take this level 1 and restore it to the new box (which should take about 3 hours) and let the users onto the new box. Thus the users should lose only 3 hours instead of 12. Can we do this? From the OnBar guide it looks like we can't but our scenario isn't covered. Sorry, we haven't had time to do a test run so we're after list wisdom (anyone called Obnoxio please pipe down!) Malc (Copying to cdi)

We did something like this using ontape. (I'm still no friend of onbar). We took a level 0 archive on the old box, restored this using ontape -p on the new one. During the restore, all users could work. After the restore was completed, we saved the logs on production box and restored these logs using ontape -l on the new box. After this restore we left the new box at the question "restore another log ?". After kicking the users we did an onmode -c, onmode -l and backed up the rest of the logs to restore on the new server. Using this way, we had to kick users out of the box only for half an hour (it took so long because informix does an read/write on all the logs after finnishing the restore). I hope this description helps. gerd

Hi, I don't have enough experience with onbar to give you any advice to your original question. But have you considered setting up a shadow server on the new site? With such a setting you could minimize the downtime to just a few minutes. Regards, Andreas Kutsche > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: forum.subscriber@iiug.org [mailto:forum.subscriber@iiug.org]Im > Auftrag von Malcolm Per.... > Gesendet: Donnerstag, 03. Februar 2005 11:21 > An: ids@iiug.org > Betreff: Deferred level 1 restore? [4147] > > > Here's a good one. > (IDS9.30, HP-UX 11i) > We're moving to a different facility and new hardware > (same basic machine & OS) at the end of the month and > in order to minimise the time taken to transfer our > 180Gb instance and allow the users unfettered access > up to the very last minute (god we're so good to them) > we'd like to do the following using OnBar: > 1) Run a level-0 backup on the Thursday night from the > old production server (currently this takes about 7 > hours). > 2) Restore this to the new server at the new facility > (L0 restore time at present is about 12 hours > end-to-end). > 3) Leave the new server in limbo while the users have > continued access to the old box. > 4) Friday night kick the users and then take a level-1 > of the old production box - we've tested this and it > takes about 2.5 hours. > 5) Take this level 1 and restore it to the new box > (which should take about 3 hours) and let the users > onto the new box. Thus the users should lose only 3 > hours instead of 12. > > Can we do this? From the OnBar guide it looks like we > can't but our scenario isn't covered. > Sorry, we haven't had time to do a test run so we're > after list wisdom (anyone called Obnoxio please pipe > down!) > > Malc > (Copying to cdi) > >

Hi, We are also in the process of moving to new hardware. We are using the HDR to do so. 1 - onbar Level-0 backup on primary 2 - onbar Level-0 restore on secondary 3 - activate HDR, the primary will send the logs to the secondary and both db will be synchronized. We are doing this one week a head of the cut over. 4 - at the time of the cut over, switch log on the primary and stop the db. 5 - change the mode on the secondary to online. Interruption: few minutes. We did the same when changing the SAN to HDS. It is fast, save, easy. Diane. -----Original Message----- From: Malcolm Per.... [mailto:malc_p@btinternet.com] Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 5:21 AM To: ids@iiug.org Subject: Deferred level 1 restore? [4147] Here's a good one. (IDS9.30, HP-UX 11i) We're moving to a different facility and new hardware (same basic machine & OS) at the end of the month and in order to minimise the time taken to transfer our 180Gb instance and allow the users unfettered access up to the very last minute (god we're so good to them) we'd like to do the following using OnBar: 1) Run a level-0 backup on the Thursday night from the old production server (currently this takes about 7 hours). 2) Restore this to the new server at the new facility (L0 restore time at present is about 12 hours end-to-end). 3) Leave the new server in limbo while the users have continued access to the old box. 4) Friday night kick the users and then take a level-1 of the old production box - we've tested this and it takes about 2.5 hours. 5) Take this level 1 and restore it to the new box (which should take about 3 hours) and let the users onto the new box. Thus the users should lose only 3 hours instead of 12. Can we do this? From the OnBar guide it looks like we can't but our scenario isn't covered. Sorry, we haven't had time to do a test run so we're after list wisdom (anyone called Obnoxio please pipe down!) Malc (Copying to cdi)

Any chance the two machine can see each other between the 2 facilities? If so, why don't you consider temporarily using HDR. Take your Level 0, and restore it on your new machine. Enable HDR. When your ready to cut over, break HDR, and set the new machine as the primary. Your down time should be minutes instead of hours. If this scenario isn't possible my next question would be why is it taking 7 hours to backup a 180gig database? It sounds like your doing a serial backup of all your dbspaces. Have you considered changing your backup methodology to take advantage of parallelism? If only temporary, you could improve your backup and restore time significantly for your migration. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Malcolm Per...." <malc_p@btinternet.com> To: <ids@iiug.org> Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 5:20 AM Subject: Deferred level 1 restore? [4147] > Here's a good one. > (IDS9.30, HP-UX 11i) > We're moving to a different facility and new hardware > (same basic machine & OS) at the end of the month and > in order to minimise the time taken to transfer our > 180Gb instance and allow the users unfettered access > up to the very last minute (god we're so good to them) > we'd like to do the following using OnBar: > 1) Run a level-0 backup on the Thursday night from the > old production server (currently this takes about 7 > hours). > 2) Restore this to the new server at the new facility > (L0 restore time at present is about 12 hours > end-to-end). > 3) Leave the new server in limbo while the users have > continued access to the old box. > 4) Friday night kick the users and then take a level-1 > of the old production box - we've tested this and it > takes about 2.5 hours. > 5) Take this level 1 and restore it to the new box > (which should take about 3 hours) and let the users > onto the new box. Thus the users should lose only 3 > hours instead of 12. > > Can we do this? From the OnBar guide it looks like we > can't but our scenario isn't covered. > Sorry, we haven't had time to do a test run so we're > after list wisdom (anyone called Obnoxio please pipe > down!) > > Malc > (Copying to cdi) > >