Let me start with this.
Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope.
Here's the thing. NEVER Look at backup from the BACKUP end. ALWAYS look
at it from the RESTORE End. In other words ask yourself this question:
"In case of emergency how do I put Humpty Dumpty back together again?"
If the answer is:
1) Get the FTP Server running again.
2) Download the images from ''The Internet.''
3) FTP them to IBM i.... wait, IBM I needs to IPL from this and, oh
crap... wWhere are our IBM i DVDs??
4) Punt back to installing from the DVDs.
5) Configure enough of the system to enable FTP.
6) FTP the images from the FTP Server
7) Restore from the images.
... then you have a LONG row to hoe. This may not be a good answer for
your company. I dont know but I'm guessing the time line for that is a
bit longer, as well as has a number of critical items on the path that
could fail.
SO what you probably want to consider instead is a VTL - Virtual Tape
Library. These are appliances that replace your TS3100 BUT to IBM i they
look just like a TS3100. With this you continue to do the same saves as
before they just go a bit faster than before. NOW just the VTL standing
alone isn't 'the perfect' solution because the data still sits in your
data center and in case of poorly driven truck, fire, floor, pestilence,
really pissed off soon to be former employee, lightning etc you could
still lose everything.
BUT with VTLs today you can hook up with folks such as:
<vendor response>
iInTheCloud.com to replicate your data to 'the cloud.' Now it is
offiste *AND* you still have a copy on-site as well. IF you need to
recover an object you get that from the local copy. To do that you use
the standard RST* commands that you would use with your TS3100. You know
them, you understand them, you trust them.
If your VTL gets destroyed with your data center then you could either
recover at our site or we can cut you a tape and send that to you or we
could replicate the tape back to your replacement VTL. Many options.
</vendor response>
In any case and with any vendor the key is being able to recover the
data quickly, efficiently, and reliably.
- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis
www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.
On 1/15/2020 4:59 PM, Kevin Monceaux wrote:
Midrange Fans,
The powers that be have me exploring physical tape alternatives. I'm open
to suggestions from those familiar with the various options. I've done a
little reading on Cloud Storage Solutions. I'm not sure if that would be a
good fit for us. We would probably need to push tape images to a local FTP
server at local LAN speed, then replicate to the cloud from there.
We have a single POWER 8 box, i hosting i, with one host and three guest
LPARs. We have just under 3TB of DASD in use, with a little over 1TB free.
We're currently backing up to a TS3100 tape library, with LTO4 drives using
BRMS.
midrange.com
