How does one backup an AIX server? The background is that we are relocating AIX servers and we would like to have a secondary backup. Client currently backs up to tape/DR site but we want a secondary backup just to cover all bases in the event of a loss of equipment.
Can we backup to a disk image on a Windows desktop?
Create local ISO images of your volume groups with "mkdvd" (use the "-v" flag for non-rootvgs), transfer the images to the Windows machine, burn them onto DVD there.
To restore rootvg boot from the rootvg DVD, then follow the instructions.
To restore other VGs use "restvg".
If you don't object to using a third party solution, Acronis TrueImage might be a solution. Acronis is Linux-based, so this should work if a) AIX uses a standard Unix drive format and b) the drives being backed up are not software RAID. I use it to image both Linux and Windows systems.
-- Plug in an external USB drive
-- Boot the Acronis standalone backup CD/DVD
-- Back up to the USB drive, compressed or uncompressed as you prefer
-- Unplug the external USB drive
-- Reboot
AIX cannot run under ESX. AIX requires POWER hardware, and ESX does not run on POWER.
Even if your AIX servers were virtual LPARs under PowerVM, there is no supported option to do offline backups.
In order to handle a real disaster scenario you must have an "mksysb" image of AIX's rootvg and some kind of backup of the other volume groups.
mksysb to an ISO image or directly to DVD (if there is an optical writer device) can be done via "mkdvd".
Please let me know if you need detailed instructions here.
"mksysb" to a bootable tape is pretty standard with AIX. There must be a locally attached tape device (or at least a tape device recognized as being "local" by the OS).
You could also write the "mksysb" image to a regular file, but if you don't have a NIM environment ("Network Install Management") you will not be able to boot from this file, so there's no true "disaster recovery".
Backups of non-rootvg data can also be done with "mkdvd", but you can as well use any standard backup method, including of course third party solutions such as TSM.
To repeat it: True disaster recovery of AIX can only be done if there is a bootable "mksysb" image, be it on DVD, tape or on a NIM server.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/tutorials/au-restoreaix/index.html
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/tutorials/au-restoreaix2/index.html
Please have a quick look