Submitted by James Dennis (not verified) on Thu, 2009/10/15 - 02:25.
Hello all,
I've just started reading this thread, but find it quite interesting. I'm somewhat new to Linux, but have worked with AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX for nearly 20 years. One of the things that has long separated AIX from the others is the ability to do a bare metal restore using mksysb and savevg. I recently was asked by a colleague if such a tool was available for Linux, which led me to this thread.
A couple things come to mind - booting from tape, as mentioned above, is a nice to have, but I think even more important given the platforms Linux typically runs on is the ability to create a bootable system image (mksysb) to a DVD. Typically mksysbs are used to restore the OS, then the Enterprise BURA tools are used to recover the remaining filesystems. In the past, we've used a combination of mksysb and savevg - mksysb to get the root volume group, savevg with exclude files excluding all the data, but using the savevg utility to recreate the non-root volume group structures (vgs, lvs, and fs).
Additionally, mksysbs can be used to clone systems using the Network Installation Manager (NIM), which I've done many times. Now, not knowing Linux all that well (but coming up to speed quickly), I'm not sure what tools are available to do system cloning, but I'm sure that is a valuable tool as well, given that most enterprises want to be able to rapidly deploy a standard image.
I know for all the above cases commercial tools are available, but not sure of open source tools to do these things. I'd be happy to participate in any forum to assist in the development of such tools.
mksysb
Hello all,
I've just started reading this thread, but find it quite interesting. I'm somewhat new to Linux, but have worked with AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX for nearly 20 years. One of the things that has long separated AIX from the others is the ability to do a bare metal restore using mksysb and savevg. I recently was asked by a colleague if such a tool was available for Linux, which led me to this thread.
A couple things come to mind - booting from tape, as mentioned above, is a nice to have, but I think even more important given the platforms Linux typically runs on is the ability to create a bootable system image (mksysb) to a DVD. Typically mksysbs are used to restore the OS, then the Enterprise BURA tools are used to recover the remaining filesystems. In the past, we've used a combination of mksysb and savevg - mksysb to get the root volume group, savevg with exclude files excluding all the data, but using the savevg utility to recreate the non-root volume group structures (vgs, lvs, and fs).
Additionally, mksysbs can be used to clone systems using the Network Installation Manager (NIM), which I've done many times. Now, not knowing Linux all that well (but coming up to speed quickly), I'm not sure what tools are available to do system cloning, but I'm sure that is a valuable tool as well, given that most enterprises want to be able to rapidly deploy a standard image.
I know for all the above cases commercial tools are available, but not sure of open source tools to do these things. I'd be happy to participate in any forum to assist in the development of such tools.
Best regards,
James (Jamie) A Dennis