Well, as expected, my opinion got a rise out of Support. So here is some
clarification
for those of you who want to take flat-file database backups without
stopping the daemons
and user interfaces.
1)If netmon happens to be in the middle of a new node discovery when you
take the backup, you might end up with some half-discovered stuff. So if
there
is a lot of stuff appearing in your network when you schedule this, you
should
plan on doing an ovtopofix (-a or -A) after restoring. And/Or, you can just
stop
netmon before making the backup. Everything else can run, including users,
without netmon.
2) If a user happened to be in the middle of a cut/paste when you took the
backup, when you restore, the mess will be cleaned up during map
synchronization. It may also require an ovtopofix (-a or -A).
3) If your network is going through a lot of changes when the backup is
scheduled to run, you might want to take the precaution of closing all maps
and stopping all daemons.
4) If you have multiple users who are actively modifying their r/w maps
at the time the backup is scheduled, you might want to take the precaution
of closing the maps and stopping the daemons.
5) Whenever you restore the database from a backup, it will need to be
updated to catch it up to the current network topology. If you have deleted
nodes since the backup, you will need to delete them again. If new nodes
have appeared on the network, netmon will discover them again. If you
have swapped out devices and reused the addresses, you will need to
delete and rediscover them, as you did before.
6) When you restore from the tar file (using pax -rp e -f <filename> )
do it with all maps and daemons down. Do an ovtopofix -a (if one map) or
-A (if more than one map). You may also have to do a reset_ci.
These last two apply regardless of whether the daemons are up or down
when the backup is taken.
AND... if you get into a mess from following my advice, don't call Support
and say 'But Leslie Clark said...'. Just go back and restore to one of
those
good clean backups you take periodically where everything IS shut down,
the way the manual told you to to it.
Leslie Clark
IBM Global Services.
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>I know this is heresy, but I do not worry about stopping Netview to take a
>database backup. If it is reasonably quiet, eg no user is in the middle of
>a cut/paste operation, it is safe enough to take a tar backup of the map
>database while the daemons are running. If you have to restore from such
>a backup, of course, you will close all maps and stop all daemons. But
>if you want to schedule a backup for the middle of the night and don't
want
>to take the daemons and maps down, I would just do it. I am speaking
>only of the flat file database here, of course. This sort of a backup is
>much better than no backup.
>Cordially,
>Leslie A. Clark
>IBM Global Services - Systems Mgmt & Networking
>Detroit
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