I am looking into disaster recovery and I wanted to know what files and/or other information do I need to keep copies of to sucessfully restore my system from the ground up..... Any help is greatly appreciated. I am running Solaris 8 on an Ultra 60.

The quick and easy answer to what files and/or other information do I need to keep copies of to sucessfully restore my system from the ground up:

All of them!


Actually, it depends on what you are going to do - and what type of disaster you are looking to recover from.

Scenario 1 - stupid user removes files he/she needed = Recover from backup tapes

Scenario 2 - stupid System Admin removes files the system needed = Recover from backup and/or rebuild server from scratch and add changed system files from backup, rebuild data from backups.

Scenario 3 - server dies - all disks lost = rebuild from scratch - reload system and data files from backup.

Scenario 4 - natural disaster - fire, tornado... = get new hardware, build from scratch, get backups from off-site, restore system and data files.

Realize that the system files you need to restore are the ones you change - stuff like adding new startup scripts that won't be there after you rebuild from scratch (rebuilding from Solaris cd). Changes to /etc/inittab, /etc/services, specialty files such as DiskSuite config files, Veritas vxprint output, Database configuration files, output from df -k command (showing how things were set up as far as mount)... these type things you may not need if all your servers are built the same with NO deviations. Example - all servers built with same OS - patch level the same - no changes to default system - no application DATA on system drives.

The most important thing you should realize - you need to backup the system and data files so you have something if you do have a disaster to rebuild from.

This also goes for upgrades, adding new software - they don't have to complete sucessfully - the only thing that has to work is how you recover from it. That will save your job more than anything.

I do realize the importance of a backup and I am doing that on a nightly basis but I am also working on a disaster recovery document that needs to be put on file for auditing purposes...

I guess that I need to know which system files I need to include in my paperwork... vfstab is one I am sure, but are there others?

Any that were changed from the default - as stated - it matters how you build your servers.

Examples of changed files in my environment (not all servers but I collect the info on each if it exist):
inittab, services, inetd.conf, system, auto_master, auto_home, shadow, passwd, hosts, netmasks, networks, vfstab, dfstab, hosts.allow, hosts.equiv, hosts.deny, resolv.conf, all crontabs, Sybase interfaces file, Oracle oratab file, md.cf, md.tab, mddb.cf,
output from following commands - vxprint -th, vxdisk list, showrev, showrev -p, share, psrinfo, sysdef, prtconf, netstat -nr, ifconfig -a, df -k, df -n, ypwhich

But you might have some that I don't - you HAVE to know your system and the difference between it and a default build.

What you gave me is a good starting point...... From here I can do some more research.......

you insight is appreciated.

i just put together a DR plan and a hotsite.

i was giveing the following criteria:

1) assume i am dead.
2) someone w/ unix knowledge would be doing the work.
3) if its not in my directions then im SOL and the plan will not work.

i covered 3 things.

1) complete system rebuild
1a) this includes which installation to do.
1b) min disk space req.
1c) any additional packages (and where they can be found inet/cd...)

2) any NON solaris software required.
2a) any special options needed to install/compile with other then default settings.

3) a copy of my backup script and a copy of the output. (so when they do get my offsite backups they know which spot on the tape to get a specific fs from.)

This serves 2 purposes 1) they know how the backup was created so they know how to restore.
2) they know where data is on the tape, since i backup multiple fses to a single tape.




all of this now covers

1) how to install from scratch.
2) how to recover just the applications/user data.

i must say though i did have an advantage of being able to build my DR machine as i wrote the docs so i was able to document each step from start to finish.