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Administrator's Guide


Creating and Storing the Disaster Recovery Plan

You can create a disaster recovery plan file and store the file locally or on another server.

The recovery plan contains the following information:

For details about the recovery plan file, see The Disaster Recovery Plan File.

DRM creates one copy of the disaster recovery plan file each time you issue the PREPARE command. You should create multiple copies of the plan for safekeeping. For example, keep copies in print, on diskettes, on network- mounted disk space that is located offsite, or on a remote server.

Before creating a disaster recovery plan, back up your storage pools then backup the database. See Backing Up Storage Pools and Backing Up the Database for details about these procedures.

If you manually send backup media offsite, see Moving Backup Volumes Offsite. If you use virtual volumes, see Using Virtual Volumes to Store Data on Another Server.

When your backups are both offsite and marked offsite, you can create a disaster recovery plan.

You can use the Tivoli Storage Manager scheduler to periodically run the PREPARE command (see Chapter 19, Automating Server Operations).

Note:
DRM creates a plan that assumes that the latest database full plus incremental series would be used to restore the database. However, you may want to use DBSNAPSHOT backups for disaster recovery and retain your full plus incremental backup series on site to recover from possible availability problems. In this case, you must specify the use of DBSNAPSHOT backups in the PREPARE command. For example:
prepare source=dbsnapshot

Storing the Disaster Recovery Plan Locally

When you create a recovery plan file but do not specify a device class, the file is stored locally in a file system. If you store the file locally, you can specify a storage location. For example, to store the recovery plan file locally in the c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\recplans\ directory, enter:

prepare planprefix=c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\recplans\

Recovery plan files that are stored locally are not automatically expired. You should periodically delete down-level recovery plan files manually.

DRM appends to the file name the date and time (yyyymmdd.hhmmss). For example:

c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\recplans\20000925.120532

Storing the Disaster Recovery Plan on a Target Server

When you create a recovery plan file and specify a device class, the file is stored on a target server. Storing recovery plan files on a target server provides the following:

First, set up the source and target servers and define a device class a device type of SERVER (see Setting Up Source and Target Servers for Virtual Volumes for details). For example, assume a device class named TARGETCLASS is defined on the source server where you create the recovery plan file. Then to create the plan file, enter:

prepare devclass=targetclass

The recovery plan file is written as an object on the target server, and a volume history record is created on the source server. For more about recovery plan files that are stored on target servers, see Displaying Information about Recovery Plan Files.

Disaster Recovery Plan Environmental Considerations

If TSM is installed in the c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM directory, the files are stored as follows:

Each instance of the server has a unique set of files. For example, after you install the database and log volumes from directory c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2, you might see the following in this instance-specific directory:

The database, log, and storage pool volumes could also be in a different directory. For example, you might see:

c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\dbs\db1.dsm
c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\logs\log1.dsm
c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\stg\data1.dsm

Files that typically reside in an instance-specific directory (that is, dsmserv.opt, dsmserv.dsk) and database, log, and storage pool volumes may instead reside in the same directory in which dsmserv.exe, resides (c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server). In this case, the directory containing dsmserv.exe would also be referred to as the instance-specific directory.

When the disaster recovery plan is created, information about the server environment is used in the stanzas within the plan file. This environmental information includes the location of dsmserv.exe, the location of the disk formatting utility, the instance-specific directory, the directories for the database, log, and storage pool volumes, and so on. During a recovery, it is assumed that the same server environment exists.

Additionally, the plan file itself will reside in a directory that you may have specified or it may reside in the default directory (which is the instance-specific directory). For example, if you specified the disaster recovery plan file prefix c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\prepare\, you might see the following:

c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\prepare\20000925.120532

The disaster recovery plan file prefix specified (or the instance-specific directory if no disaster recovery plan file prefix was specified) is also used in the stanzas within the plan file. During a recovery, when the plan file has been split into individual files, it is assumed that these individual files will reside in this same directory.

To summarize, the environment for a recovery using the disaster recovery plan file is assumed to be the same as the original environment which includes:

If the recovery environment is not the same, then you must edit the plan file to account for the changes in the environment.

To help understand where these various directories and expected locations for executables are used within the plan file, see Example Disaster Recovery Plan File and you will see the following usage:

Usage Directory
Server executable c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server
Enrollment certificates (licensing) c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server
Administrative command line client c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\saclient
Disk formatting utility c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\console
Instance-specific files c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2
Database volumes c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\dbs
Log volumes c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\logs
Storage pool volumes c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\stg
Plan file location c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\prepare
Indivual files split out from plan c:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM;\server2\prepare


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