Chapter 23. System Backup and Recovery | HP Certified: HP-UX System Administration

Chapter Syllabus

23.1 Types of Backup

23.2 Methods of Backup and Restore

23.3 Using fbackup and frecover

23.4 Using tar

23.5 Using SAM to Back Up and Restore

23.6 Using Ignite-UX

Like any other machine, your HP-UX system can develop a fault at any time. As a system administrator, it is your responsibility to protect users' data and restore it as soon as possible. Individual users are concerned about their data, as they may consist of years of hard work. Business data are more critical, as most of the time the entire business depends on the safety of its data.

Data may be lost in a variety of circumstances, such as a system crash, hardware failure, natural disaster, or accidental file damage. The system backup process ensures that you will be able to recover data with minimum loss. While planning a system backup procedure, a number of data safety measures are kept in mind. The backed -up data are stored at a different location from that of the system. This is to avoid damage caused by fire or any natural disasters. Keeping multiple copies of backed-up data is useful so that in case you lose one copy, you will have another one.

It is also important to decide which system components should be backed up. You may decide to back up the entire system once per month, but it is not practicable to do it on a daily basis. If you decide to back up only partial data on a daily basis, you may decide to back up one or more components of the following.

users' home directories
important configuration information files; most of these files are kept in the /etc directory
mailboxes
databases

Even if you decide to back up the entire system, it is not wise to include /tmp or CD-ROM in it. The method of keeping a partial backup is called incremental backup, where multiple levels of backup are used. Each backup level is represented by a number. A lower backup level (higher number) saves only those files and directories that are created or modified after taking a backup at a higher level. While restoring data backed up using incremental backup, data backed up at the topmost level (least number) is restored first. After, that the next lower level data is restored and finally the most recent lowest level backup is restored. The incremental backup method saves time and amount of backup media.

In this chapter, you will learn types of backup and different methods used for taking a backup. Two of the these methods will be presented in detail. You will also use SAM to back up and restore data and schedule backups . Usually the backed up data can't be recovered until you have a running system. A tape created using Ignite-UX is used to boot and install a base system, in case your boot disk is damaged. The Ignite-UX backup and recovery method will also be discussed in this chapter.

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