Chapter 9: System Backups and Restores

Overview

SOLARIS 9 EXAM OBJECTIVES COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Given backup requirements, develop a backup strategy that includes scheduled backups, number of tapes required, naming conventions, command protocols, and backup frequency/levels.

• Explain how to perform incremental, full, and remote backups to tape for an unmounted file system using the ufsdump command or explain how to back up a mounted file system using ufs snapshot.

• Explain how to perform ufs file system restores and special case recoveries.

Backing up critical data is one of the most important aspects of computer and network administration. Not having a backup of irreplaceable data is just asking for trouble. Imagine that your banking institution didn't back up its data, and the server containing all your information crashed. Would you be a very understanding customer if they lost your financial records? Not likely. As another example, imagine a small service business that keeps all its customer information in a database. What happens if the database is lost or corrupted? The outlook for the company is bleak-unless it has a reliable data backup.

Your backups do you no good unless you know how to restore them. Logically then, after discussing backing up data, this chapter covers restorations. It introduces various aspects of backing up and restoring data on your Solaris computer. Included are options to back up and restore the entire file system (as well as individual files), backup scheduling, and backup strategies.