Disaster recovery question

[goony]

I'm preparing for a disaster recovery drill. I have a Sun Solaris environment and a Solaris-based Legato server.

I'm using a Solaris feature called "flash archive" that will take a snapshot of a running system and store it as a large image file. Later, this archive can be restored (via network server, if needed) is a way to speed the build/recovery of a system.

I will also have a set of backup tapes that will be summoned from an offsite vault, but this set of tapes may be days or weeks newer than the flash archive of the base system.

I'm also experienced in creating an entire new Legato server from just a set of tapes and bootstrap information.

Here is what I am wrestling with (for my disaster recovery drill)... Do I

(A) make the flash archive without any Legato files and, thus, install Legato 'from scratch' to this system and then do the normal 'recover-by-the-book' steps, or

(B) recover my server from a flash archive that is a fully-running Legato server and them somehow figure out how to incorporate my set of tapes (that have their own, newer indexes) into my Legato server.

I'm leaning towards "A" because that's what I understand the best... I'm not comfortable with the "B" option at the moment because I haven't done enough research on how to take a somewhat dated server/indexes and make it current with the set of backup tapes.

The goal is, obviously, to re-create my Legato server at a foreign site so that it can be used to restore data to all of the clients that will also be reconstructed. Once this
is done it will have to be able to begin functioning again and invoke backups of the newly-restored clients.

Thoughts?

 

[Chacalinc]

take a look to the "Networker Recovery Manager" admin guide in

http://www.legato.com

(it is a separated Netorker product)

http://web1.legato.com/cgi-bin/catalog?sf=Releases&level=18-1#18-1

http://web1.legato.com/infodev/publications/RecovMgr/2.0/nrmag.pdf

it shows how to recover a NW server...

Hope this helps you.

 

[goony]

Sigh. NRM (which I know about) is fine for doing a 'bare metal recovery', but that's not what I'm trying to accomplish.

I'm looking for an answer to a specifc technical question, not something else to buy.

 

[ag100]

Hey - We've done DR using Flash Archive for about a year, now. Since / and /var are generally included in the flash, the NetWorker packages come back automatically, and therefore, do not need to be re-installed.

I've seen a few circumstances, where the NetWorker directories need to be created, but generally, after you restore the flash archive, start NetWorker, create a device to restore the bootstrap, then run your mmrecov.

You may also want to do a bootstrap save to a file device somwhere on your O/S, so when you restore your flash archive, the latest bootstrap is also available, without digging through tapes (obviously requires ample disk space).

Hope this helps,

-ag100

 

[Chacalinc]

I pointed you out to NRM in order to see how you can recover NW from a disaster, not to buy it..

Anyway, what you can do is make the Flash Archive with NW installed, and -in a disaster- recreate it and then clean (delete the content) of

path_to/nsr/index
path_to/nsr/mm

with those folders empty (they must exists!) you will have a new NW install... recover the bootstrap and run "nsrck -L7" and you will be ready for next backups.

Cheers.

 

[goony]

That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for!

Thanks!!

 

[new2me]

If you have time to test out both of your methods I suggest you do that. This way you can document and stop-watch the DR process and see which method your company is most comfortable with.