Originally posted by: apple08

dear aix guru,
would really appreciate your advice on the following:
1. is it good to perform mksyb during server is online (application is running)? was thinking if there open files by application and can mksysb backup the open files (db2, websphere)?
2. how to determine if we can backup of rootvg capacity to tape. our tape capacity is 40GB. the backup was completed successfuly to one tape without asking to slot in another tape, but to determine this. the rootvg as attached.

hope to hear from you. thank you
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Originally posted by: unixgrl

1. Are your application files in rootvg? You can run mksysb at any time. If there were problems with running backups while files are open, you'd never be able to back up anything. rootvg always has open files. If your app is not in rootvg (and it shouldn't be!) it won't touch the app files and doesn't care about them.

2. Did your mksysb run to completion? Did you check its logging and output? That's how you know if it worked. If you are really concerned, restore a system using the mksysb.
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Originally posted by: apple08

dear aix guru,
thank you. if i have 40gb tape size, how can know the preempt the tape can contain the rootvg (mksysb)?
attached is our rootvg. the rootvg is mirrored (hdisk0 and hdisk1). the details are as below:
hdisk0 and 1 size each = 136.5GB
total PPs = 273GB - free PPs 207GB = 66GB
66GB is the mirrored size, meaning we only backup 33GB of rootvg size right to 40GB tape. correct me if wrong. hope to hear from you. thank you
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Originally posted by: MarkTaylor

mksysb == aix rootvg backup .. only AIX rootvg system filesystems **should** be in rootvg, you should have seperate volume groups for your apps .. this keeps the size of rootvg small and therefore DR will be quicker .. saying that tho, somtimes on dev systems where you only have 1 disks you have no choice .. in which case exclude the app filesystems by using /etc/exclude.rootvg and the mksysb -e option (standard practise).

Then set up some other backup tool for the application filesystems (backup / tsm blah)

HTH
Mark Taylor
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