5.6The /vault Option

One of the most important reasons for copying backups is to make a copy for off-site storage which can be used for recovery.  This is typically called vaulting.

UPSTREAM has a sophisticated vaulting facility.  When a vault copy of a backup is made, it is fully cataloged on the source system, in a vaulting directory.  You can have as many vaults as you wish in a vaulting directory; the only requirement is that a backup can only be vaulted to a given directory one time. 

To allow for multiple vaults, UPSTREAM supports a virtually unlimited number of vaulting directories.  Vault #0 is the default backup directory; segregated vaults begin at 1 and count upwards from there.

Vaulted copies of backups have their own separate tape pools and retention settings.  They use the reserved backup profile name VAULT<vault number>, where <vault number> is a number from 1 to 999.  This allows the use of vaults as a way to maintain extended retention for selected data.  Since they can be in separate tape pools, you can use different media types for vaults which may facilitate recovery at the disaster site.

Vault number 0 is reserved for moving backups back into group of regular (non-vaulted) backups.  You can vault to OUTVAULT=0 to put backups back into production (for example, if you wished to do production backups at your disaster site).

Since UPSTREAM maintains catalogs of vaulted copies, you can perform inquiries of vaults and immediately know what data will be available at the remote site. 

You can immediately switch between the local and remote copies of backups.  As a fast method of data recovery, for example, you could mirror the Reservoir machine with a remote site (using EMC’s SRDF for example), and then switch between local and remote copies of tapes immediately without an intermediate recovery step.

Cycling of tapes between the local and vault sites is easy as UPSTREAM will maintain a list in the tape manager of allocated and available tapes.  When a tape becomes available to the tape manager, you can simply request it from the vault site.

Vaults can be used for many purposes:

  • Off-site data retention. 
  • Multiple local copies of backups
  • Long-term local and remote retention of backups.

We recommend that you create a separate pool of tapes for backups which are to be vaulted.  This way, these tapes can be cycled in and out of UPSTREAM’s use without affecting the regular backups.

To create a vault directory:

  • With vaults, it is recommended that you use a separate output pool of tapes from your regular tapes (the scratch pool is often the same).  For example, VAULT1 in your profile definition for Tape Pool.
  • Use the UPSTREAM Director, Profiles tab, Definitions button to create a backup profile definition VAULT<vault number> - for example: VAULT1.  Note that many of the other profile parameters are used such as:
    • Backup Retention Settings:  Specify the separate tape pool and set the retention setting appropriately for the use of the vault.  By setting these to the rotation period of your vaults, when automatically UPSTREAM deletes backups and frees tapes, you can use this as a list of tapes to recycle from the vault site. For example, if this is an off-site vault with a weekly rotation and you have 4 sets of tapes, then set the Backup Retention Settings to be Count of Tape Sets and set it to 4. 
    • Tape Pool:  This allows you to keep your vault media separate from your regular backups.  It also allows you to use a different media type for vaults.
    • Other tape attributes.  These include fixed blocking and whether tapes are taken from the unrecognized pool.
  • When you run the uscopy program, specify the OUTVAULT parameter with a vault number, 1 or greater.  The number can only be 1 larger than the current largest vault number on file.  Thus the initial OUTVAULT parameter number can be 1.  But once you have created vault number 1, you can add additional vaults to vault number 1 or create a vault number 2.

It is legal to make a vault of a vault.  You may want to do this to make an extra local copy of a backup or to take a copy home.  To make a vault of a vault, specify INVAULT=<vault number> with the disk/tape specs on the command line to uscopy.

There are additional parameters which can be defined for encryption of vaults.  See chapter 9 for a description of these additional parameters.

 

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