Hi there,

We have a 9.21 Informix database that backup using ontape every night. The backup file is getting to be too large to ftp to our disaster recovery box, so we were looking into having the backup file broken into sections of a set size and transfer those over on parallel lines.
Does anyone know how to get Informix to not create one huge binary backup file, but rather a set of smaller binary files?

Thanks,

you can do it, but it requires manually running the backup.

You have to set the TAPEDEV to a file (ex /bkupdir/dbname_lvl0 ) and set the TAPESIZE parameter to something smaller (ex 2048000 ) then using 2 open windows

in window 1
ontape -s -L 0

When the ontape window asks for tape 2 -

in window 2
mv /bkupdir/dbname_lvl0 /bkupdir/dbname_lvl0.tape1
touch /bkupdir/dbname_lvl0

Then press enter in window 1

Do this for each subsequent tapes, increasing the tape #, until the archive is complete, then gzip the tape files and ftp them.

All of this assumes you're on a Unix server

Thanks very much, never thought of going that route. Very ingenious!

As an alternative you could also try creating a compression named pipe. This could dramatically reduce the time/file size for the backup. It will however send the cpu/s skyrocketing...