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D3 Backup


Backup your D3/Linux or D3/RS6000 system automatically, every night. Keep all your FILE-SAVEs in an online archive. Make them readily available for SEL-RESTORE or ACCOUNT-RESTORE at any time.

Get sent an email after each FILE-SAVE summarizing the time/date, # bytes and if any GFE's were encountered.

How does it work? It runs the FILE-SAVE to a virtual tape file in Linux/AIX and rotates it into an archive directory.

See our new Remote FTP Service for D3Backup.

Features

  • A completely automated and unattended backup method. It is designed to use the virtual tape mechanism in D3.
  • Runs in Linux/AIX, designed to "shell into" D3, run the FILE-SAVE and return back to Linux/AIX.
  • It is designed to run as "cronjob" (a linux background process). Normally, it is scheduled to run once a day.
  • Rotates backups automatically, keeping a full week and all month ending FILE-SAVE's in Linux/AIX as virtual tape files named sunday, monday, tuesday, endofjan2001, endofsep2001, etc.
  • All activity is logged to the standard Linux /var/log/messages file with date/time stamps. This way you may track all activity.
  • A Pick menu is provided to allow easy SEL-RESTORE or ACCOUNT-RESTORE from any archived FILE-SAVE.
  • You may list all the available FILE-SAVE's archived from the provided Pick menu.
  • You may watch a running backup in action or view the output of the last FILE-SAVE from the provided Pick menu.
  • Email (optional) can be sent with a summary of how the FILE-SAVE session progressed which includes a byte count of the size of the backup file and if any GFE messages were detected. See a sample email.
  • FTP (optional) can be initiated to store the FILE-SAVE on a remote system just in case this system has a hard disk failure and all backups are lost. See our Remote FTP Service if you do not have your own FTP server. See Archive Recommendation below. This feature requires /usr/bin/ncftpput to have been installed from the Linux distribution CD. Or downloaded for AIX from www.ncftp.com.
  • You may query d3backup in Pick BASIC, to see if it is running to add intelligence to your existing applications with: 
    EXECUTE "!d3backup -q" CAPTURING RUNNING
  • You may query d3backup from Pick BASIC, to find out when it is scheduled to run with: 
    EXECUTE "!d3backup -s" CAPTURING SCHEDULE
    It is recommended to run d3backup every day but Linux allows you complete control over this.
  • It can be controlled from a nightly processing program inside D3. This means it can sleep until a file appears in Linux/AIX then it will start. Use -b option.
  • The FTP can be the encrypted SFTP (ssh) for security purposes.
  • FILE-SAVE can be turned off/blocked if /tmp/nod3backup.txt exists.
  • It can send the FTP to a secondary FTP server as an option.
  • Added quick email after FILE-SAVE but before FTP starts for those admins that need this.
  • A flat file database of statistics can be kept of each nightly performance of the d3backup.

Archive Recommendations

The d3backup system was designed to manage FILE-SAVE's. Seven in a week and month endings, 19 per year. But, as you know, software can only go so far. Hardware must also help us here.

If you do not have a RAID system, I recommend installing a second hard disk and setting it up in Linux as /archive. This way, if the primary hard disk fails we will not lose the entire archive of d3backup files.

It is not recommended to keep D3/Linux running on the same hard disk as the d3backup archive directory. Be aware of the risks. If you have D3 and Linux running on different disks then you already know what you are doing!!

Also, you will have to monitor the disk usage yourself. Month ending FILE-SAVE's will begin to take up space, so prepare for a year's worth of space.