Conference 44.370::system_management

>>    So as from 8th August, the ADG cluster will shut down on Friday
>>    evening at 17:30 to take full backups of all discs.

Any chance of the ADG cluster shutting down _later_ than 17:30 on Fridays?

How about 20:00?

Seems a little restrictive for ADG people when IS Operations people already 
work the full 24 hours.

Howard

    I'll leave Jerry to respond to whether or not backups can begin
    later than 17:30.
    
    However, please understand that Ops do NOT cover Acre Road on a
    24 hour basis. I think that the actual hours are 09:00 - 22:00,
    but I am open to correction on this.
    
    Regards,
    	steve

    I think that I.S. only work 09:00 to 22:00 even in Decpark;
    we do NOT have 24 hour cover there.
    
    They didn't even work 24 hours over the end of fiscal year....
    
    Peter.
    

    Any chance of we have different machines going down on different 
    days? Please?
    
    Stewart

    The reason for shutting down at 17:30 is so that a full backup can
    finish before midnight. This reduces the chances of human error
    which - if you've ever tried to do a standalone backup of a dozen
    discs in one evening - increases exponentially in the early hours
    of the morning.
    
    If 17:30 shutdowns on Friday are going to cause you a problem how
    about offering to stay behind and take over from the operators at
    about 11:30pm to finish off the backups!
    
    I'll see if the backups can be split over 2 evenings and therefore
    start later.

hmmmph, not so sure about taking over at 11.30 p.m.!

I like the idea of splitting the backups over two nights though.

Howard.

    The operators have suggested that ADG have a full standalone backup
    taken on a Wednesday evening starting at 7pm instead of Friday at
    5:30pm. Now that there are 2 tape drives on an ADG HSC50 there
    should be time to defragment disc drives after each standalone backup.
        
    If there are no objections this will take place from Wednesday 16th
    September.
    

    It's now apparent that 7 hours are needed to take standalone backups
    of the ADG discs - so it will be necessary to shut down the ADG
    cluster at 17:30 on Wednesdays.
    
    Any objections ??

>>    Any objections ??

'fraid so, the usual one that I wrote here a few weeks ago.

I do realise that backups are important, nay crucial, but why start them at the 
minute that we ostensibly finish work?

A 7 hour backup starting at 17:30 will finish at 00:30 the next morning; what
about the quiet hours between then and 07:00, when there are very few ADG people
here, and the ADG cluster is idle?

Howard

    Me too, .
    
    It's a bit difficult to wind down at 5.30pm, how about 6.00pm??
    
    Would this still cause problems??
    
    
    Janet

It is difficult to stop working on a project at 5:30 pm, moreover when 
under extreme pressure (there is usually at least one project in 
that mode in Acre Road any week!) it is impossible. People can very 
quickly loose motivation having to pack up at 5:30pm and wait until the 
next day.

Should we:-

 	. Take a backup on over two days (if it is possible)
	. keep the amount of diskspace down
	. use smaller drives (so each one can be done per night)

I am sure others can think of even better ways. I am afraid if we don't 
then the situation will only get worse as we store more & more data on bigger
and bigger disk drives.
                
or have I got this out of proportion ....?!?

- Remote backups (evidently used on Production systems in Digital)
- incremental backups over a longer period
- paying the operators to stay longer (changing times etc)
                                 

	there must be more ......  

    Chapter 13  -  System management strikes back
                                            
    Encore une fois j'attemptez � utilizer le Volume Shado�ing. This
    little known and rarely successful piece of software is about to
    be plonked on the ADG cluster. 
    
    This will do three things :-
    
    1) Online HSC backups will become possible, which may perhaps just
    possibly enable the standalone shutdown time to be later in the
    evening. 
    
    2) The discs will NO LONGER be known by their physical names.
    e.g. What is currently known as $28$DUA16 will become $28$DUS16
    So, if you have references to physical drive names, they won't work!
    There will be no change to the logical names of devices e.g.
    Disk$userdisk will still be Disk$userdisk.
    
    3) The command "$show device d" which currently shows about 12 discs
    on the ADG cluster will show more 'DUSnn' devices. This doesn't
    mean that all of a sudden we got beaucoup de space, it's just the
    way that VMS displays shadow volumes.
                                         
    
                       

    This HSC backup software is really nifty. In fact it's so nifty
    that the ADG cluster will shut down for backups at 6:00pm on Wednesdays
    instead of 5:30pm. And, if time allows, up to 3 discs will be
    recompacted each week to make files contiguous on disc.
    
    

    For the 20th/21st January only, FUTURS cluster full backup will
    be done on Wednesday 20th Jan starting at 7pm, and ADG cluster full
    backup will be done on Thursday 21st Jan starting at 6pm.
    
    On 21st Jan the futurs cluster will have logins disabled from 5:30pm
    and backups will run AT HIGH PRIORITY beginning at 5:30pm. As soon
    as backups have finished the cluster will be shut down for the upgrade
    to VMS 4.7.

.14>    This HSC backup software is really nifty. In fact it's so nifty
.14>    that the ADG cluster will shut down for backups at 6:00pm on Wednesdays
.14>    instead of 5:30pm. And, if time allows, up to 3 discs will be

	Could the login message on the ADG cluster be changed from 6:30pm
	to 6:00pm as stated above, (and practised), to avoid confusion.

Cheers,

Bryan