Bootable tape/dvd/cd/network backup

I usually work with AIX based systems that has a feature called mksysb. It lets me make a on the fly system backup while system is in full production, to a tape, CD, disk, DVD of file.
The backup contains: the OS, boot information, kernel adjustments, user data (if I want to), device configuration, OS logical volume (slice/partition) and filesystem settings (like mirroring, location on disk and user modifications and additions on that matter including enlarged OS root filesystems and user created filesystems).
The backup is made by a very simple command line execution or a menu driven execution (can be done by somebody without any UNIX knowledge whatsoever).
The backup is used for a variety of things: like
- cloning a system to another system (whereby the target hardware does NOT have to be identical). The only thing that?s matter is that there should be enough disk space.
- Crash recovery a system from scratch to bring it back like the state it had during the backup. The system is usually recovered within 20 minutes (even if the hardware config and device config is totally different on disk, cpu, memory and network level).
- Defragment and optimize logical volumes and filesystems
- Reducing the size of logical volumes and filesystems to the exact use of capacity
- Creating Alternate bootdisks to test new maintenance releases
- Install systems (like jumpstart) over the network
The crash recovery restore process is as simple as the backup process (can be done without UNIX knowledge).
I have reviewed and tested the JumpStart but that does not offer what I want. First of all jumstart has to be maintained. If I change something in the OS on AIX it is automatically backuped up with the mksysb tool (bootable/cloneable backup). With Solaris I have to manually add the changes to the jumpstart configuration. Second it does not create a portable bootable backup on other media than a network so cloning a system in a remote area (without network) is impossible. Third it is not suited for creating day by day backups on the fly.
The other utils that Solaris offers to create backups like ufsdump and fssnap are way to basic.
So correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect there isn't such util like AIX's mksysb or is there?
Regards,
themissingfeature.

if you are looking for the bare metal recovery or cloning part of mksysb you can have a look at flarcreate. It can make an image to a streamer while the system is in production. To recover the image you need a Solaris installation CD. This is the best thing I found so far since I looked for something similar like HP's Ignite make recovery...

Similar Messages

  • Network backups?  Anyone tried Retrospect with Mozi?

    I'll admit it, I'm still working on my overall backup strategy.. I've got 2 mac's, a couple of PC's and now a deprecated FreeBSD server waiting to find a new home. Currently all of my important data is on my Mac Mini server. In perusing my options, I ran across Retrospect Backup which we've used at work in the distant past on Mac's and it worked fine. I noticed that the PC version of the product can do network backups to Mozi which is one of those Internet based backup services.. I'm wondering if any of you have used this combination to backup PC's and Mac's using the Retrospect tool on either side and what you thought of it over old-school backups to tape or hard drives that are local to you? Thanks!

    Was a big user of retrospect for many years. Not using crashplan pro - to provide local disk and remote off site backups.

  • Network backup & User self sign-up

    I'm about to deploy my first Messaging server and I would appreciate some help in the following issues:
    - Is there any option in the Messaging Server to allow users to sign themselves up for e-mail (yahoo or hotmail like) or would that functionality have to be written as a separate web application (not my idea, the client wants this)?
    - Our customer wants to backup the message store to both tape drives as well as a Network Attached Storage device( Network Appliance). Regarding the network backup, would there be any problems if we were to mount the NAS filesystem to a partition on the Messaging Server and then have cron run imsbackup on a regular basis ?
    - It says somewhere in the documentation that imsbackup does not support 2GB files. Does that mean that the Message Store partitions have to be smaller than that ?
    Thanks alot

    Response from Dave Pickens:
    I'm about to deploy my first Messaging server and I would appreciate
    some help in the following issues: - Is there any option in the
    Messaging Server to allow users to sign
    themselves up for e-mail (yahoo or hotmail like) or would that
    functionality have to be written as a separate web application (not
    my idea, the client wants this)?Would have to write it themselves or use Portal Server's Self Registration
    - Our customer wants to backup the message store to both tape drives
    as well as a Network Attached Storage device( Network
    Appliance). Regarding the network backup, would there be any
    problems if we were to mount the NAS filesystem to a partition on
    the Messaging Server and then have cron run imsbackup on a regular
    basis ?No. My suggestion would be to have cron backup from disk to NAS and then from NAS to tape.
    Also don't forget that we can periodically back the database only -- much quicker and allows you to restore the database only rather than all the messages, etc. when only the database is corrupt.
    So I'd backup the database a couple times of day from disk to NAS
    - It says somewhere in the documentation that imsbackup does not
    support 2GB files. Does that mean that the Message Store partitions
    have to be smaller than that ?No. Message Store partitions can be many times larger. My general recommendation has been to not exceed 2x the tape capacity in the past. I am leaning now towards a 1 to 1 ration. If you can get 70GB of data on a DLT, then your partitions should be roughly that.
    Back up the database itself (aka snapshot) as well to a separate tape.

  • Can't find my data from Time Machine network backup

    Migration assistant shows inconsistent sizes for applications, computer settings and other files/folders, about 30GB when I had 270 GB only in pictures.
    I did a clean Mavericks install.
    How do I find my data from the TimeMachine network backup?
    The size of the TimeMachine backup is consistent with what I had before ( >300 GB)...so how do I recover it?.
    I'm using a new user account name in the clean installation.
    Thanks

    Read a few threads about this being a problem with account access, so I renamed the account in my new installation to the account name used to create the backup and found the old accounts....now when trying to proceed it told me there was a conflict with the account name and i had to use a different one!!.
    Apple has stopped to be simple...
    So how are we suppose to use the migration assistant if either way there is a problem? ( using same or different account name )...

  • HT3275 Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive.  Could not complete backup to media share.  The network backup disk does not support the required AFP feat

    Since updating OS to Mountain Lion from leopard, I get the following error message when trying to backup with time machine on external drive.  "Could not complete backup to media share.  The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features."  What are AFP features and how do I get Time Machine to backup to my current external backup?

    This means that your NAS does not support the required encryption. Update your NAS to the latest firmware or ditch it and buy a Time Capsule (they are the most reliable when using TM).

  • TimeMachine network backup crashing my computer

    I have a USB drive attached to my router and available via samba. I've followed the instructions available from multiple sources online on how to set this drive up as a TM backup, and it works fine. However, every so often, I will notice that fsck_hfs is running, eating up 20% or more CPU, with kernel_task taking another 10-15%. When I disable TM or turn off airport, this problem ceases. If I leave fsck_hfs go long enough, my system locks up and I need to hard reboot.
    Two questions: a) is this a known bug, and if so is there a workaround? b) can I tell my system not to run fsck_hfs on remote drives? I consider (b) a viable option and I really don't care about the consequences - I would much rather rebuild my TM sparsebundle every month then have my computer crash every day.

    jdidion wrote:
    BTW, are you saying that if I instead attach this drive to my linux server and attach TM via AFP that Apple will support this in the event that the fsck_hfs problem still occurs?
    If it meets this criteria: +*If your backup disk is on a network, the network server must use Apple File Protocol (AFP) file sharing, and both your computer, and the networked backup disk, should have Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later.+*
    It's way beyond my level of expertise, but this post in another forum may contain the key:
    The technical reason why Apple limits Time Machine to 10.5 AFP volumes appears to be to prevent disk image corruption. There were additional features added to AFP in 10.5 to support Time Machine. These presumably allow the disk image engine to force disk image journal data to write out all the way to the disk. Without such features, a network interruption can result in a corrupted filesystem on the disk image despite journaling. Remember, journaling relies on the journal being written all the way to disk before the changes take place. If you can't guarantee that (e.g., because of network/NAS buffering) then the journal is useless. Time Machine appears to rely heavily on disk journaling to deal with network drop-outs, interrupted backups, and the like. Take this away and your data is at risk.
    If the NAS you are using supports these features it should report them to the OS and you should natively be able to choose that volume. If you have to trick the OS to use the volume it means the NAS does not support it.
    To summarize: if you care about your backup data you should avoid using non-natively supported AFP servers.

  • Time machine stalling with network backup to Live Duo

    I'm running Mountain Lion (10.8.2) and using a Western Digital Live Duo (NAS with 6TB set up with RAID1 (mirror)) for backup with Time Machine (TM). The WD Live Duo has a specific feature for supporting Time Machine and shares a partition for TM backup, but something is wacky as TM came up a few days ago saying that it had validated the backup and needed to create a new backup.
    The NAS is available on the network, I can easily access it from multiple computers on our home network as well as from the iMac I'm trying to backup.
    I'm connected to the NAS via a network switch (1000/100/10) that both the NAS and this iMac are connected to using Gigabit ethernet wired connections.
    Time machine has been running for 2 days now and reports " 67.63GB of 363.44 GB - About 5 days" . Yesterday it said 4 days.. ;-)
    I've been having issues with TM stalling and eating up all the resources when I was just backing up to a local USB drive.
    Is there any other control for TM that is not visible? Where would I find the TM logs to see if something else is going on?
    Any other ideas?
    Thanks.

    Backing up with Time Machine to a third-party network device is unsupported by Apple and unreliable. Most if not all such devices use the obsolete "netatalk" implementation of AFP, which doesn't meet the technical requirements for a Time Machine server. I strongly suggest you back up to two or more locally attached external hard drives. If you want network backup, use an Apple Time Capsule or another Mac with File Sharing active as the destination.

  • While trying to setup a time capsule backup to my MyBookLive external drive, I got the following error message: The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features. What's up with this?

    While trying to setup a time capsule backup to my MyBookLive external drive, I got the following error message: The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features. What's up with this?

    This means that your NAS does not support the required encryption. Update your NAS to the latest firmware or ditch it and buy a Time Capsule (they are the most reliable when using TM).

  • Hard drive backup - then network backup

    I created a full backup of my macbookpro to a connected firewire drive (150g). I then hooked this same hard drive up to another leopard computer (imac). The macbookpro sees the drive and is willing to back-up to it.... but it wants another 150g; as if it's starting over from scratch.
    Is it using two different methodologies for backing up? Do you have to stick with one methodology when backing up? Backing up 150g over the network is not really an option - hence the reason I wanted to do it as mentioned above. Thank you!

    It seems to be that on a locally-connected drive, Time Machine backs up into a simple folder structure, whereas if you are connected remotely, it backs up into a .sparsebundle file named after the connected computer. For now, probably best to stick with one method or the other until someone figures out how to convert between the two.
    I suspect you could convert the local backup and package it in a .sparsebundle, but my network backup is nowhere near finished, so can't try it yet.

  • TM Network Backups Freezing up Host computer....

    In my workgroup we have set up a 10.6 Mac Mini as a network backup for several other macs. There's three of us backing up our 10.6 Macs to a RAID1 array connected to the Mini via Firewire.
    Everything works great as long as the Mini is available, but we're running into a problem any time someone logs out or shuts down their machine while Time Machine is backing up. The host machine (the Mini) freezes up when this happens and has to be rebooted each time.
    Since not all of our users are tech savvy, we're not sure that simply training them to stop a backup job first before logging out is going to work.
    Has anyone else dealt with this? Is there any way to make the host Mini more robust in dealing with a dropped backup job?

    normally, TM should stop a backup cleanly when the computer shuts down and users don't need to do this manually. logging out should not interrupt a TM backup at all. but try using this link
    http://systemsboy.com/2008/04/time-machine-after-logout.html
    I know it works with external drives but I'm not sure if it will help with a network backup like yours.

  • Network Backup HD for Mac OS 10.3.9 and 9.2.2

    Hi,
    I'm going to be putting a 320 GB PATA Hitachi 320 GB HD into a Firewire enclosure
    for Backing up my 10.3.9 HD with Data Backup scheduling. I also have a G3 B&W with Mac OS 9.2.2 and Dantz retrospect express to use for Backup too.
    Is there a way to have this Firewire drive used for Network Backups for the 2 Macs with different scheduled backups, partitions, etc..?
    The FireWire drive enclosure only has two firewire ports, but I also have the eMac and the G3 hooked up to a router and cable modem. I only have one Firewire
    cable currently. The Network way would seem the best option though. (less cables)
    Thank you for any helps!
    Michael
    Message was edited by: Learning+

    Hi John,
    Thank you for your reply!
    Can I replace my FireWire drive enclosure for a NAS enclosure? Where and how do you hook these NAS drives up?
    I'm thinking I'll just have to manually attach the FireWire cable and mount the drive for backups (for the G3) It doesn't get used as much anyway. The first partition will be 130 GB for OS 9 and the rest will be for OS X. I'll just have to do it that way. Unless I can use Dantz over the Network, but that would still be the manual way of doing this. And more work. The G3 isn't on all the time anyway.
    It doesn't seem to be a problem to do it this way. But, I'll need to be mindful of my incremental schedule for OS X when I backup OS 9.
    Oh well..
    Thank you!
    Michael

  • Burning a bootable XP DVD on a Mac?

    Okay, so I managed to install an XP version with cs1 on my bootcamp partition, and then slipstream cs2 into xp in the windows partition. Then I brought it back into the Mac partition. So now I have the files ready to burn as well as the iso file from disk utility.
    My question is: is there a way to create a bootable xp dvd including the new sp2 xp files?
    Thanks!

    crispycreme wrote:
    Great, thanks again.
    Would you also know how I can test the disk to make sure it's actually bootable before actually trying to boot from it?
    I am not aware of a procedure to do this.
    I have used a -RW disc for burning, so in case anything's wrong, I don't lose a disc.
    It might be possible to use VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ to test the burned disc.
    If it works with VirtualBox it should should work with BootCamp as well.
    But I haven't tried it, since my slipstreamed XP is rather old.
    Stefan

  • I accidentally tapped "Forget this Network" while attempting to sign in to my wi-fi. Now I am unable to sign in to my wi-fi. Please HELP me reset the "Forget this Network" so I am able to sign in.

    I accidentally tapped "Forget this Network" while attempting to sing into my wi-fi network. Now I am unable to sign into my wi-fi network. If anyone can tell me how to undo this "Forget this Network" it wound be most helpful. Thank you.

    All you need to do is input your wifi password. If you cant remember it, try looking on the router. It might say somthing like WEP key, or WPA key.

  • T500 will not boot from bootable CDs/DVDs, but will read and open files on them

     System: 2 T500s, both manufactured early April 2009, win XP, ATI Radeon 3650 graphics,4GB RAM, latest Lenovo drivers installed..
     Problem:-   Our 2 T500s cannot boot from any windows coded recovery CD -except Lenovo's rescue/recovery discs. Some -but not all- Linux code recovery CDs do boot the T500. Every other kind of CD and DVD such as audio and video works fine in windows XP.
    Here an example of our 2 T500s' failure to recognise bootable CD/DVD discs. All the files and folders on a Paragon Partition Mgr v8.5 Recovery CD can be viewed in windows explorer and files such as jpg, txt and zip can be opened. This CD will not boot the T500, however, it will boot our other -non-Lenovo- computers. The same applies when the media are DVDs with identical content.
    We have tried several different kinds of CD and DVD media to no avail. Burning the media on other computers and using several kinds of burning software does not help, ourT500s refuse to boot from them too.
    The problem seems clear enough, on starup our T500s fail to distinguish between windows coded bootable and ordinary CDs/DVDs -unless they are Lenovo recovery/restore discs.
    A solution would be gratefully received.

    Thank you for your very kind assistance,
    Q: "1. Did you apply the DVD firmware fix here?"
    A. It was` already installed on our 2 T500s. We have also applied just about every driver update from Lenovo.
    Q: "2. Did you try booting from a USB optical drive that you first attached to another system where you could verify that booting from it was possible?"
     A. Yes, many times from a USB CD/DVD drive, it failed too. We burned on that drive too, but the T500s will not boot from those CDs either.
    Q: "3. In this thread the solution was to use another burning program than Roxio..".
     A. We have used the Paragon internal ISO creator/burner, the Roxio burner that was preinstalled wth the T500, BartPE internal ISO/burner ,InfraRecorder and others too. Made ISOs and burned from them, burned CDs directly on the fly etc, all to no avail..
     For some reason, our two T500s' CD/DVD drive controllers or some intermediate software act as if the CD's boot sector is not present. Clearly, something (BIOS, software, unstable hardware, or ? ) is blocking the read or write of the data necessary to boot these CDs. Whatever that 'something' is, it has no effect on burning and booting Lenovo recovery CDs.
    The bizarre part of all this is that a`Lenovo recovery CD burned on the T500 drive WILL BOOT the T500. A Paragon v8.5 recovery CD or BartPE CD burned in one of our non-Lenovo computers will boot ithat and every other computer we have except our T500s.
    PS Thank you for the link to the new version of Roxio, will download and install it.

  • Network backup disk does not support the required AFP features

    I have a mac mini with two (4T) hard disks each set as target in TimeMachine. Backups have been made on both for some time. This afternoon one of the disks is being rejected as target volume, with the "network backup disk does not support the required AFP features" error.
    The sparse image on the disk that is the actual time machine target shows a modification tim of 13:09, time machine reports the last backup on that volume as made on 13:08. It seems the last successful backup was made at that time. The other TimeMachine target volume on the same min reports a last backup at 15:28
    So why an error now? What has happend in the last hour, or so, to cause the disk to no longer be suitable? Why only on one virtual disk?
    The mac mini runs OS X 10.9.4 (13E28), the disk with the failing backup volume is formatted with Case-Sensitive Journaled HFS+, the still working disk Journaled HFS+.
    This may be related: A couple of month ago  I lost the complete backup on that disk, when time machine conclude that the contents of the target volume was corrupt. At the time I blamed that at a failed backup when I had accessed the mini over ssh using SLINK when traveling. Maybe that conclusion is wrong and this is part of the same problem.
    Any pointers on how to get my second backup disk working again would be much appreciated.
    Eduard de Jong

    The error message has disappeared!
    Earlier this morning the disk has been used as target for a backup by time machine without triggering the error message. A backup 8 hours earlier has also been made to the same sparse image (looking at the folder names).

Maybe you are looking for