On Fri, 10 May 1996 14:51:37 EDT Stan Horwitz said:
>Hello;
>
>A problem  with backups  on the  Listserv here  has just  been brought  to my
>attention. Apparantly, our backup procedure  isn't reliable where Listserv is
>concerned. We're running  Listserv-NJE for VM version 1.8b.  This Listserv is
>currently home to  about 230 different lists, many of  which can be extremely
>active during  peak semester periods.  About 90% of  the lists here  are also
>configured to maintain  notebooks. The notebooks reside mostly  on a separate
>minidisk, not the 191 that Listserv uses.  We also use VMBackup as our backup
>software.
 
I thought I was reading about SJU.  We're similar except we run *-TCP.
 
What's the problem?  In our case, if I try to get a FILE back from VMBackup
I get told that the disk isn't a cms mini-disk, which is news to me.  So
far I've been able to get what I need by keeping an extra (big!) mini-disk
around and telling VMBackup to recover the entire disk with the file I need
to the spare disk.  Ugly, but it works.  Operations says that VMBackup does
spend a lot of time when it hits those notebook disks (500, 1000 and 1500
cylinders) so your estimates sound plausible.  Our users don't like us to
go offline for hours, and if we do then the system is bogged down for hours
more until we catch up.  So, yeah, I'd say we have a sub-optimal situation,
but we've gotten by.  So far.
                                                 -Kary