[Info-vax] Best "Standalone" boot versions for Alpha and Itanium

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-01-12 20:00:29 +0000, Rich Jordan said:

> Assuming compatible hardware, which versions of the VMS distribution 
> media are the best for use as standalone maintenance and backup?
...
> So whats the go to version of VMS for this?

OpenVMS I64 V8.4 with a recent UPDATE — haven't shaken out the most 
recent patch yet, but am not aware of particular BACKUP issues with V5 
or later — and probably booted via InfoServer if there's another 
current-version OpenVMS box around, and booted from disk if not.  Don't 
boot and use DVD, as it's very slow.   Do use BACKUP /IMAGE /VERIFY.

If you have a very short window and already have HBVS on your critical 
disks, then add a "spare" member each of the virtual units (DS disks), 
allow all copies to finish, shut down and boot, but don't add the 
backup volume.

If you really need speed, avoid BACKUP/IMAGE and use a sector copy.   
BACKUP /PHYSICAL or dd or controller-level, or otherwise.

BACKUP /IGNORE=INTERLOCK is useful when you only need to pretend to 
have actual backups.



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