Everhart,Glenn From: mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu Sent: Friday, April 17, 1998 11:50 AM To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com Subject: Re: Backup from VAX to NT In article <1998Apr14.124024.1@sldb4.slac.stanford.edu>, fairfield@sldb4.slac.stanford.edu writes: >In article <980414111236.3b1d@ner66.ner.ora.fda.gov>, > Cliff Klein 718-965-5414 writes: > >> I have a VAX 6610 running VMS 6.1 using Multinet for IP. I currently >> backup 5 of my 8 drives (4-RA92 & 4-RA90) to an 8mm Exabyte tape. >> I've recently had some problems with the tape drive. I was wondering >> if I can do a backup to my NT server. The NT server is running NT 4.0 >> and has 4 9.5 GB drives. I tried to FTP the files using Acadia as my >> terminal emulator however the file transfer bombs when it tries to >> backup an open file. Does anyone have a procedure where I can backup >> my VAX to NT. > > 8mm drives are known to require a LOT of maintenance. We've > never had any trouble _reading_ an 8mm tape, but we regularly have > lot's of trouble during _writes_...keeps our 3rd party maintenance > engineer quite busy... :-{ With the original 8200 model 8mm drives we found that there was enough variance between different drives so that if somebody sent us a tape, it might only work on one of the 3 drives we had around the division. Worse, when such a drive failed, the replacement might not be able to read existing backup tapes. An 8205 we use on our SGIs is a bit more reliable, but does have a tendency to suck in a tape, and then refuse to let go of it until it is power cycled. Buy a DLT, you'll think you've gone to heaven. > VMS Backup is > _reliable_. It guarantees (given you use /VERIFY on the BACKUP > command) that the data really did make it to the oxide. There is NO > such backup program available for NT (or unix for that matter). No kidding. I wonder if this isn't the real core of Stanford Business school's problems. See: http://www.sjmercury.com/business/center/stanford09.htm?st.ne.fd.mnaw I don't know for sure that those were WNT servers though, they *might* have been Novell. For some reason, the Stanford Business school web pages don't mention this little incident anywhere. Easy to understand why, who is going to go for the pitch: "Come to our school, let us lose your data!" We're getting in a bunch of WNT workstations (replacing SGI's), and it looks like it is going to be awful ensuring restorable backups, especially for the system disks. The advice I've seen in a couple of places is to keep a spare drive with a full OS on hand, because WNT doesn't have anything resembling standalone backup. Then also have a second, minimal OS, partition on the same disk. So you backup the regular system disk by booting from the secondary partition, and you restore that partition by also booting from the secondary, or if you can't (as for a failure of the whole disk), then you have to physically plug in the secondary drive, boot from that, and then restore. You'd have thought that if Microsoft was going to rip off VMS so thoroughly, they'd have at least paid more attention to the backup/restore methodologies. I mean, if these were VMS workstations, we could have used standalone backup (if VAX), or the boot CDROM (if Alpha), or a temporary reboot as a satellite node of a cluster (for either.) > IMHO, you'd be > a _fool_ to take another step down the road you're > following...unless you don't need your data, in which case, why are > you doing backups at all? Ken, do you know if heads rolled over the business school fiasco? Demonstrating that the WNT backup methodology is unreliable by trashing user files seems like it would make a fairly persuasive argument for replacing those WNT servers with a bunch of Pathworks servers. Regards, David Mathog mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu Manager, sequence analysis facility, biology division, Caltech ************************************************************************** * Affordable VMS? See: http://seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu/www/pcvms.html * **************************************************************************