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Tivoli Storage Manager for UNIX Backup-Archive Clients Installation and User's Guide

Performing an Image Backup

Root User

From your local workstation, you can back up one or more volumes or raw logical volumes as a single object (image backup) on your system.

An image backup provides the following benefits:

The traditional offline image backup prevents access to the volume by other system applications during the operation. Use the imagetype=dynamic option to back up the volume as is without remounting it read-only. Corruption of the backup may occur if applications write to the volume while the backup is in progress. In this case, run chdsk after a restore. This option replaces the dependency on the Copy Serialization value in the management class to perform an image backup without unmounting and remounting the file system read-only. See Imagetype for more information.

For Linux86 only: By default, Tivoli Storage Manager performs an online image backup of file systems residing on a logical volume created by the Linux Logical Volume Manager during which the volume is available to other system applications.

Note:

You can use the imagetype option with the backup image command or the include.image option to specify whether to perform an offline or online image backup. See Imagetype for more information.

Before You Perform an Image Backup

Before you perform an image backup, please consider the following:

Volume Device Type Support for an Image Backup

The following table lists devices supported by the backup image command. A raw device might be a disk slice, a partition, or a logical volume.

Table 12. Volume Device Type Support for an Image Backup

Logical Volume Manager Raw Device Types Sample Device Name Backup Image Command Support
AIX Logical Volume Mgr Logical Volumes /dev/lv00 AIX, AIX 5L
Sun Solstice Volume Mgr Meta Devices /dev/md/dsk/dl Solaris
Veritas Volume Mgr Logical Volumes /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg/
vol01
HP-UX, Solaris
Raw Disk Partitions /dev/hda1, /dev/sda3 Linux86
Linux Logical Volume Mgr Logical Volumes /dev/myvolgroup/
myvolume
Linux86
Raw Disk Disk Slices /dev/dsk/c0tld0s0 Solaris

The client must support the raw device type on the specific platform in order to perform an image backup of a raw device. If you want to perform an image backup for a file system mounted on a raw device, the raw device must be supported. Remember to specify raw devices by their block device name.

Note:
You should not back up disk slices containing cylinder 0 on Solaris because the volume table of contents (VTOC) will be overwritten after a restore.

Incremental-by-Date of Last Image Backup

You can perform an incremental-by date image backup to back up files that have changed since your last image backup. The following restrictions apply:

Performing an Image Backup Using Command Line Client

Use the backup image and restore image commands to perform offline or online image backup and restore operations on a single volume. See Backup Image and Restore Image for more information.

Use the mode option with the backup image command to perform an incremental-by-date image backup that backs up only new and changed files after the last full image backup. However, this only backs up files with a changed date, not files with changed permissions. See Mode for more information.

You must assign a mount point for the volume on which you want to perform an image backup. Tivoli Storage Manager will not back up a volume without a mount point.

Performing an Image Backup from the GUI

To create an offline or online image backup of your file system or raw logical volume, perform the following steps:

  1. Click on the Backup files and directories button in the Tivoli Storage Manager main window. The Backup window appears.
  2. Expand the directory tree and select the objects you want to back up. To back up a raw logical volume, locate and expand the RAW directory tree object.
  3. Click Backup. The Backup Task List window displays the backup processing status. The Backup Report window displays a detailed status report.

Considerations

Image Backup Example

The following is an example of how you can use image and incremental backups together:


Client Server
Monday Files 1, 2 and 3 reside here. An image backup is performed. (Assume a full incremental was also performed.)
Tuesday File 4 is created. Daily incremental is performed - including incremental for file 4.
Wednesday File 2 is deleted; file 3 is changed. Daily incremental is performed - including incremental for file 3.
Thursday File 1 is deleted. Daily incremental is performed.

Suppose you want to use the image created on Monday to restore your file system as it appeared just after Thursday's incremental backup. You would enter the following command:

restore image filespace -incremental -deletefiles

Tivoli Storage Manager would then use the following process:

  1. The server sends the image backup to the client. This image replaces the current content of the target file space. The file system now contains files 1, 2 and 3. File 4 has been lost because it was not part of the original image.
  2. Based on the information from the server about subsequent incremental backups, the client removes files 1 and 2.
  3. The client restores file 4.
  4. The client restores the latest version of file 3.


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