> > I wonder if anyone would like to share their experiences with regards > > to automated shutdown/restart of linux guests for DR snapshot purposes.
We recommend a combination of file-level backups run from within the virtual machines to a designated backup server that is NOT one of the application servers, coupled with and a monthly physical dump of all the disks in the system as a scheduled outage. The designated backup server is shut down after backups are complete, and a separate physical dump of the backup server only is done every day. We also maintain a 1 pack recovery system disk that is used if the entire system has to be restored from bare metal. The 1 pack system has CMSBATCH userids (one per tape drive) that we feed restore jobs, one job per pack. In DR, the 1 pack recovery system gets restored first, then the most recent dump of the backup server is restored. We then use the file-level backups on the backup server to bring the application servers up to date at a file level. That approach gets the whole system back up ASAP, but limits the actual down time of the individual guests to a few minutes each month. Mike Walter did a great presentation on creating a 1 pack system at the last VM Workshop. Check out www.vmworkshop.org/2012 to find it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/