AIX

Hello Guru's

We are trying to save some data for 10 -15 yrs. so we created a NFS share file system and mounted on AIX 5.3 servers, keeping in mind that we might need to replace the expired disk/bad disk every 2 yrs or 4 yrs.

Now we are trying to solve. How to protect it from getting deleted or overwritten?

could any one please suggest, how to make the (/xshare) file system an write once ,while owner group users of this share can read the contents

I'd be looking at Tape Archive if it was me, not disk.
Also, a time-expired backup (archive) is not really suitable for disk residency due to MTBF on disks.
How often would you Archive?
What volume of data?
How sensitive is the data? Compliance issues?
If the answers to these questions still leave cloud backup in scope, Amazon S3 is not a bad product!

gts1999 is right: disk is definitely not the best destination if you need long-term data storage.

Maybe not even tape is, because you have to regularly unwind and rewind the tape to maintain its usable state (big tape libraries and professional backup software do that automatically but i suppose you do have neither, otherwise you would store these data there and not on disk).

You could use a DVD-writer and burn the data to DVD. This will keep the data safe for probably 5-10 years if you store the DVDs safely. After this time you might want to test the media, eventually duplicate it to new media and dispose of the original ones.

If the transfer to DVD takes too long you can use a disk buffer in between: store to disk, then use a low-load time to slowly migrate the data from disk to DVD.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Thanks for the suggestions. we are talking about 80-100 GB backups, we write yearly once. all other tasks like.. space allocation,mounts are complete.Our IT decided with NFS disk, once the NFS disk is ready to expire,we will perform copy/recopy. Because our departments get the space for Free .
Could any one please suggest, how to make the (/xshare) file system an write once ,while owner group users of this share can read the contents. If I could solve that I can close this request.

You are free to decide whatever you want, but be warned: this is a very, very, bad reason to base a decision on in all things technical.

There is definitely, positively no such thing: either one is allowed to write or not. If one is allowed to write he is permanently entitled to do so, if one is forbidden the non-entitlement is also permanent.

You could write a script which checks the directory in question and, if files are in it, mounts it read-only, otherwise it mounts read-write. Then put a cron job in place so that the directory gets unmounted/remounted once a day (or more often, whatever you deem feasible).

This will be as close as possible to "write once", but you will have to understand that your original requirement is not possible as such, any solution will be a better or worse compromise between what you want and what is possible.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Thank you so much for the reply.will try the Script,mout,crontab etc etc

---------- Post updated at 10:54 AM ---------- Previous update was at 05:21 AM ----------

May be I didn't ask the correct question, Here is the correct question.

Is it possible to assign a user write but no deletion permissions to /Xshare?. if it possible, how?

As i said above: no, this exactly is not possible.*) It is possible to come close to this the way i described above, though.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
__________________
*) after all, having write access means the user could modify the file to contain 0 bytes - this would be as good as deletion, no?