[gpfsug-discuss] backup and disaster recovery solutions

Jonathan Buzzard jonathan at buzzard.me.uk
Mon Apr 11 16:02:45 BST 2016


On Mon, 2016-04-11 at 10:34 -0400, Jaime Pinto wrote:
> Do you want backups or periodic frozen snapshots of the file system?
> 
> Backups can entail some level of version control, so that you or  
> end-users can get files back on certain points in time, in case of  
> accidental deletions. Besides 1.5PB is a lot of material, so you may  
> not want to take full snapshots that often. In that case, a  
> combination of daily incremental backups using TSM with GPFS's  
> mmbackup can be a good option. TSM also does a very good job at  
> controlling how material is distributed across multiple tapes, and  
> that is something that requires a lot of micro-management if you want  
> a home grown solution of rsync+LTFS.

Is there any other viable option other than TSM for backing up 1.5PB of
data? All other backup software does not handle this at all well.

> On the other hand, you could use gpfs built-in tools such a  
> mmapplypolicy to identify candidates for incremental backup, and send  
> them to LTFS. Just more micro management, and you may have to come up  
> with your own tool to let end-users restore their stuff, or you'll  
> have to act on their behalf.
> 

I was not aware of a way of letting end users restore their stuff from
*backup* for any of the major backup software while respecting the file
system level security of the original file system. If you let the end
user have access to the backup they can restore any file to any location
which is generally not a good idea.

I do have a concept of creating a read only Fuse mounted file system
from a TSM point in time synthetic backup, and then using the shadow
copy feature of Samba to enable restores using the "Previous Versions"
feature of windows file manager.

I got as far as getting a directory tree you could browse through but
then had an enforced change of jobs and don't have access to a TSM
server any more to continue development.

Note if anyone from IBM is listening that would be a super cool feature.


JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Fife, United Kingdom.





More information about the gpfsug-discuss mailing list