[Info-vax] Direct FC connection between IA64/OpenVMS and HP 1/8 Tape Loader with LTO-5?

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-25 21:13:02 +0000, richard.l.dyson at gmail.com said:

> This new site wants me to use their Linux-based storage, maybe CIFS/SMB 
> or NFS but I'm not comfortable with that for backups.  I guess I will 
> never be able to restore directly from the backup device since I will 
> have to have a working VMS in order to access the remote backup 
> save-sets...
> 
> But I guess it will be OK for user/data disks.

In no particular order...

Used Fibre Channel Switches routinely cost less than a hundred dollars USD.

OpenVMS lacks an SMB client.

"CIFS" is the name of what is now a specific version of SMB, and a 
version that's old enough and insecure enough that you really don't 
want to be running it anymore.  SMBv3 / SMB 3.1.1 is current.  
Unfortunately, OpenVMS has no capabilities past CIFS / SMB1 / SMBv1, 
client or server.

If you're going to use NFS, make sure you're on the current TCP/IP 
Services patches as you'll want NFSv3 client support and both that 
feature and then some necessary fixes for that arrived via patches for 
TCP/IP Services V5.7.

Adding a couple of terabytes of disk and creating backups locally and 
then pushing copies remotely via sftp works fine, too.  A half-dozen 
used 300 GB Universal HDDs might cost US$125 or so, based on the last 
batch seen here.  The newer SFF HDDs are pretty cheap, too.

There are some add-on and third-party backup solutions you might want 
to test, too.

As other folks here will tell us, you can build a complete and 
customized and bootable OpenVMS environment that allows for remote 
access to savesets for tasks such as retrieval and restoration.   Which 
is true.  Customizing the installer DVD is a little more work, and 
customizing an HDD or three that was specifically generated from the 
installer DVD contents and tweaked for local system recovery is another 
approach.

Irrespective of the approach used, you'll want to document and to 
practice retrieving the remote copies, though.   It's a whole lot nicer 
to document and test that restoration when everybody's not panicked.

Backing up OpenVMS itself can be wasteful.  Beyond the double-dozen 
files that get changed fairly often in a cluster, the rest of a boot 
disk can be restored from known-good distribution kits and a few 
locally-customized files.  In a number of configurations, I've moved 
those locally-customized files over to a common disk — SYSUAF, 
RIGHTSLIST, etc., and the SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM et al — and that gets more 
frequent backups.  The static parts of the boot disk can get monthly or 
quarterly or after-an-update-or-patch backups; less-frequent copies.  
Once the base boot disk is recovered and restored and booted, the rest 
gets easier.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC