AIX

Hi,
I am very new to AIX, i have a development and a production server with AIX 6.1. I am using following command to backup my system

/usr/bin/mksysb '-m' '-V' '-i' /dev/rmt0

You can what i have in my root volume group in the atached file and and you can also see the backup information of the backup which i take on the tape.
My problem is, backup takes more than one hour to complete and the size of backup you can see is 19G. Why my backup size is this much big and it is taking this much time? On my production server, it takes 3 hours to complete and backup size is around 40G. Why is it so?
I just want to backup my System so that i can recover it in case of any failure.
Thanks

Salman

what is your PP SIZE?

Can you post the output of df -gt ?

Do you have a verbose log of the backup?

Are there any errors on rmt0 in errpt?

Is this a new issue or has it always been like this? If it is not new, when did it start?

Can you run the mksysb with the -v option do see what is being backed up? You will need to redirect to a log file.

Hi,

I am taking backup with verbose and will be uploading next time, dafinately i will be using -v option for this..

Can you explain this question "Are there any errors on rmt0 in errpt?"
I didnt see any error message when it checks tape drives readbility
I am first time doing this type of sys admin guy. I am a DBA actualy

Please see result of command you asked me to run in attached file

Hi,
Please take a look ath the output of my backup command with verbose. I have saved the log in two files, log1.txt and log2.xtx

Thanks
Salman

ok. your backup is only ~4.5G which isnt to bad.

I have a few ideas for you

1) please post the output of

Code:

lsattr -El rmt0

2) change the block_size of rmt0 to 1024 if it is listed as 512 and rerurn the backup. add the -b 200 option to mksysb.

Code:

chdev -l rmt0 -a block_size=1024

3) if the compress attribute is no, then check it to yes and re-run the backup.

Code:

chdev -l rmt0 -a compress=yes

4) if 2 or 3 don't apply then I would suggest that you exclude the /ml-fixes file system from your backup. This should reduce the backup time by almost 50%. You can always backup that file system with another method without slowing down the mksysb backup or worse case a system restore. re-run the backup and report the times if this is ok.
echo /ml-fixes >> /etc/exclude.rootvg

Hi,
Thanks for your suggestions. I would be applyin what you just said but i didn't understand your phrase "ok. your backup is only ~4.5G which isnt to bad."
My curren tbackup size is 19.3 G in compressed format and 27.6 G.
Please see the output of the command you mentioned in point 1st, in the attached file.
I have excluded /ml-fixes. And it is taking around 50 minutes to backup.
But my main concern is the size of my backup which is still 19.3 in compressed forat which i can see if i execute the command

# listvgbackup -l -f '/dev/rmt0'

VOLUME GROUP: rootvg
BACKUP DATE/TIME: Mon Feb 16 19:48:00 GMT+08:00 2009
UNAME INFO: AIX sapsvr03 1 6 0000DAE2D900
BACKUP OSLEVEL: 6.1.1.0
MAINTENANCE LEVEL: 6100-01
BACKUP SIZE (MB): 27648
SHRINK SIZE (MB): 19348
VG DATA ONLY: no

Why backup size is this much big?
Thanks

Salman

the actual data in the backup is only 4.5G. see the last log file.

Code:

The total size is 4558270852 bytes.