Re: Anyone doing HOT/COLD Backups directly to TAPE ?????????

Although this can be done, it is not advisable to do so since it increases the amount of time during which the database is unavailable.

Do you need any special software ? Not to my knowledge. Simply write the necessary files to tape using appropriate OS primitives (ie. TAR, BACKUP, etc depending upon your platform).

As a compromise you could, although it complicates your backup scripts slightly, copy each data file to a suitable backup directory, write it to tape and then delete it before backing up the next data file. For an offline backup this is not going to save you anything, but for an online backup, it would reduce the amount of time between 'begin backup' and 'end backup'.

If I were you I'd simply buy another disk, disk space is cheap. If you need argument to convince the powers that be that it would be money well spent, if you can always leave a copy of the latest backup on tape then recovery time will be significantly reduced (since you don't need to go and find the right tape, load it etc.)

Hope this helps.

A Ustby wrote in message <34ed9131.0_at_news7.centuryinter.net>...
>Hi,
>
>Anyone doing HOT or/and Cold backups directly to tape ????
>
>I running into problems find a "staging" area large enough for a disk
>hot/cold backup. Before I go back to management and ask for more DASD,
>I would like to see if directly to tape is being done.
>
>If so how ?? Do you need 3rd party software ?? Problems with it ???
>
>Thanks for any and all comments on this subject.
>
>Art
>
Received on Sat Feb 21 1998 - 00:00:00 CST