Backup: Is there a better way?

[Art Gentry]

In article <2072 at cuc1.UUCP>, msellow at cuc1.UUCP (Marlon Sellow) writes:
> The computer I use is a Sequent Symmentry with 1 gigabyte of storage. The 
> previous SA used a daily dump of entire file systems to do backup. As the new
> SA, I want to try something that will be easier to recover specific items--We
> have Oracle--instead of what restoring from a dump would require. Also, we
> currently use the large tapes (2400ft, 1600bpi).
> 		
The way we have done our backups for several years on 20+ UNIX systems is thus:

1) we maintain 2 complete sets of backups, rotating each set on subsequent
   backups.  These are complete copies of all file systems with one file
   system on each tape.  This makes finding a file much easier than going 
   through an entire set of tapes made for an entire system.  These tapes are
   cut on every Saturday.

2) we also maintain 2 sets of daily backups (same rotation as above).  These
   daily tapes contain all files that have been modified in the last 24 hours.
   The daily bu run is taken care of by a cron job, so all we have to do is
   make sure the right tapes are mounted before we go home at night.

Both tapes (weekly & daily) are cpio archive tapes, which makes it very easy to
retrieve any individual file or directory of files from any tape.

Art
$include <stddiscl.h>