Hi Folks -

VERY new to Informix/UNIX (not a great beginning, I know...). So...

The new boss wants me to come up with a backup strategy for a smallish (< 4G) IDS 9.2 database on AIX 4.3.3. The server will have 2 tape devices, a RAID 5 disk configuration, enough disk to stage any of the backup there first, if need be, and the backup process itself should be scripted and require as little operator involvement as possible. I have some questions:

1. Onbar requires a norewind tape device. I have not come across this requirement for ontape. Does this requirement exist for ontape? Are DAT devices norewind devices, or does it depend on the actual DAT device itself, that is, some DAT devices are, some aren't? Can I use smit to confirm this attribute?

2. If I am able to script the backups using ontape (using Curtis Preston's infback.sh, which handles all interactive steps short of changing tapes), is there any real reason to go with onbar?

3. Am I wrong, or is ISM and Onbar quite difficult to set up? (Its architecture vis-a-vis the database server is reminding me of Orrible's Enterprise Manager, which can be a pain to learn...not that I don't have all the time in the world, mind you).

4. The duration of a restore is important. My last question is this - all things being equal, which is faster, onbar or ontape? (When I say all things being equal I mean, for both, logical logs backed-up to one tape device, storage data backed-up to another. And presume a complete crash, so that a level 0 restore begins the restore process.)

Any advice will be VERY helpful.
Thanks,
Chris

Hi
1. You did not mentioned the 2G limit on ontape, - I couldn't figure out if it is a problem or not. Not an issue with the onbar.
2. Even if the backup is complitly automatic in ontape, the restore is not.
I was able to script the backup, but not the restore. My onbar restore is complitly automatic.

But I use windows....

Windows or not. ontape scripting is not supported.
That's why we have onbar.
Onbar is NOT difficult to setup. There is a manual onbar/ISM which will guide you an a step by step base.

onbar is able to do parallellisme. Since you have two tape devices, you can backup AND restore (restore time was important) in parallell. ISM supports up to 4 tape devices.