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CHAPTER 3 Overview
3.1 Introduction
Backup Professional, also referred to as BP, operates in a heterogeneous environment to back up and restore machines through a client-server network interface. This means that machines of differing operating systems may be backed up and restored through familiar user interfaces.
In Backup Professional, the server is referred to as the machine that contains the tape drive. The machine that is backed up is called the client. In the language of computers, a client or client node is not a person but a computer. In the client-server computing model, the client computer requests a service from the server computer. The server usually grants the request. The server may also be a client if and when it is backed up.
Following is a list of key points that you should consider. These points will be discussed in detail throughout this manual.
· Every backup and restore revolves around a central task table on the server.
· All backup listings are stored in a database on the server.
· A backup profile contains all the necessary information to run a backup for a given client machine.
· A client machine has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to design its own backup and restore profiles, which are submitted to the server and added to the task table.
· The unattended backup scheduler automatically adds backup tasks to the task table for a group of clients at a designated time. Their progress is monitored and results are reported to the system administrator.
· Users at client machines can see graphically what has been backed up without administrative assistance.
· The supervisor can restore any file to any client.
· Client backups are performed in the background. Therefore, users can continue to do their work while a task is in progress.
· Tape labeling helps manage an increasing number of archive tapes and secures important data from being overwritten.
· Jukebox management allows for large volumes of data or rotated weekly schedules.
Initially, to set up and configure Backup Professional, you must specify the names of the clients and the tape devices that are physically connected to the server. A typical Backup Professional network configuration is shown in Figure 5.
FIGURE 5. Typical Network Configuration![]()
Automatically backing up a client is accomplished through a schedule or at anytime through the Backup Professional backup facility. A backup or restore of a client through its respective program is executed on either the server or client. Either way, you select the files that are to be backed up or restored and the tape device to use. The tape device dictates the server that is used to process the task. Whether you back up a client from the client itself or from the server, the backup or restore is added to the task queue on the server.
The task queue is managed by the program called tasker running on the server. It is tasker's responsibility to ensure that the tape drive is available, initiate the task, and remove the task from the queue when it has completed. Since the task is placed in a queue, it may not be immediately executed due to another task using its resources. The status of tasker may be viewed only on the server machine by using the Administration utility. This is also the program that is used to set up and configure Backup Professional clients, devices, and automated backup schedules. Automated backup schedules are used to create a hands-free backup of a group of clients on a given interval and are discussed further in "Scheduling Automated Backups" on page 71.
Backup Professional programs and data may be installed anywhere on the system with the exception of one initialization file. For Microsoft Windows clients, the main initialization information is found in the win.ini file in the windows directory. For all other platforms, this information is located in the file /etc/default/bp.ini. The information in this file indicates the Backup Professional installation path, which is defined by the variable BPDIR.
Throughout this manual, abbreviations are used to indicate Backup Professional directories. These abbreviations can be found in Table 5.
3.2 License Issues
Backup Professional is a licensed product. The initial license is for a 30 day demo once it has been installed. You must register the product to receive your license certificate before the 30 days or your backups will not work.
See "License Management" on page 90 for detailed information.
3.3 Memory Requirements
Backup Professional server should have at least 16MB of memory. However, the memory needed by the server will vary depending on the number of concurrent backups. The Backup Professional server dynamically allocates memory as required for each backup/restore process.
3.4 Disk Space Requirements
Installation disk space requirements differ among platforms, but it is safe to assume you will need approximately 20MB of space for a server and 5MB for each client. You may also install Unix clients into an NFS directory and have the directory mounted on each client to save space. As for the database, it will consume disk space for each backup until the backup has been purged or the backup tape is reused. It is best to install the database onto a separate filesystem.
3.5 Backup Information Database
Backup Professional server stores information about configuration, schedules, and backups to a database. The database files are found in the directory $DBDIR. At installation time, you have the option to specify the installation path ($DBDIR) of the database files. Backup Professional stores database information in a highly compact and efficient manner. However, the way database files will grow in size depends upon the number of master and incremental backups and the size of the machines that are backed up. The database relinquishes space whenever a backup tape is relabeled. For a server installation, you should install the database on a disk partition with space to grow. It is best to watch the database size for a few weeks to get a feel for how much space is generally used.
See "Database Administration" on page 161 for more detailed information.
3.6 Reporting Features
To minimize unnecessary reports, Backup Professional reporting facilities provide a flexible means of automatic and manual reporting of backup tasks. Unattended backups can report on failures and/or give a concise backup summary to be printed or mailed to a user or administrator. Neither of these reports need to be generated and the options to implement automatic reporting are set during backup schedule configuration.
Unattended backup reports are manually generated through the Administration utility [Misc->Schedule History] menu. Reports on daily failed backups or a weekly backup summary may be manually generated through the [Misc->Reports] menu.
See "History and Reports" on page 111 for detailed information.
3.7 GUI Features
Graphical User Interface (GUI) versions of Backup Professional programs are available on many of the supported platforms. Unix platforms that have X11R4 or better can use the Motif implementation of the backup (xbackup) and restore (xrestore) programs, along with the server Administration utility xpromon. You can also use the menu facility that gives access to the main Backup Professional programs. The Backup Professional menu (bpmenu) is shown below.
Microsoft Windows client platforms implement a GUI interface to back up and restore their individual machines. All windowed interfaces allow for a graphical selection of files and directories to back up and restore, along with setting specific options as well as configuration and administration.
3.8 Remote Administration
Backup Professional supports remote administration using a character interface. This is available from any of the server platforms. You can telnet into the server (or dial in via modem) and access this interface by running:
bpmenu -c
3.9 Platforms Supporting Non-GUI Features
Each supported platform has the command-line interface program bpr, which gives you access to the common operations such as backup and restore. On the server, there exist other command-line programs that perform server management functions. See "Appendix D Command-Line Utilities", for a complete list of the programs and syntax. The Remote Administration utility is a non-GUI version of the Administration utility. See "Remote Administration" on page 97 for more information.
3.10 Security
Backup Professional maintains an internal supervisor account that allows non-root users to gain administrative privileges for backups and restores. With supervisor privileges, a backup or restore will be performed as if the user is root. This gives the user full access to tape backups and the files on the backups from any client machine. Day-to-day user security can be summed up in the following statements:
· For backups: Only the files that the user has access to will be backed up.
· For restores: A regular user may only restore backups that were created by that user.
A supervisor can back up any accessible system and can restore any files to any machine.
See "Supervisor Override" on page 88 for a complete description of how the supervisor override is used.
3.11 Backup Schedules
A backup schedule can be thought of as a group of machines that are backed up to a specific device. The group schedule is run at a certain time each day. Every day, tasker, which is responsible for executing the schedules, will check each group's start time. When it is time to start a group's schedule, tasker will check each client within the group and, depending on the client's frequency, determine if the client's backup needs to be run.
See "Configuring Your First Schedule" on page 55 for a quick introduction to backup schedules.
3.12 Tape Issues
Backup Professional will work using any tape drive managed by the underlying operating system. That is, if you can get the normal system utilities such as tar or dd to use the tape drive, then BP will be able to use it also.
Backups are appended on a tape which allows for many backups of multiple clients to be contained on one tape. However, up to version 1.3, BP will not split a backup across two tapes. Versions 1.4 and higher include the span_tapes utility for splitting backups across tapes for server backups.
See "Tape Management" on page 141 for detailed information on using tapes.
3.13 Jukebox Issues
The Backup Professional jukebox module is designed to allow any utility or driver for a jukebox to be used. The use of a tape jukebox is highly coupled with backup schedules. A configuration file is used to specify which slot's tape will be used on a specific day of the week. Configuration of a jukebox requires a special license feature depending upon the number of slots in the jukebox.
See "Working With Jukeboxes" on page 153 for detailed information on using tape jukeboxes.
3.14 Online Help
The entire manual is available online in HTML format in the $BPDIR/info.dir directory for you to view using a browser. The Unix GUI Backup Professional applications can also be used to view the online manual from the [Help] menu. The manual chapters make use of hypertext links to allow you to quickly find information within the manual. You can also search a chapter for a text string using the [Edit->Search] menu of the help dialog. You can also print chapters and selected text from the help dialog.
Context-sensitive help is available for all components of the GUI applications. Help for a specific object is available in a number of ways:
1. Press the F1 key or the right mouse button over an item of interest for immediate help on the item.
2. Use the key sequence ^? (control key and question key simultaneously). The mouse cursor changes to a question mark. Press the left mouse button over an object of interest.
3. Select the [Help->Context] menu from the main screen in an application. The mouse cursor changes to a question mark. Press the left mouse button over an object of interest.
Some objects may intercept the methods in #1 and #2 above, in which case nothing will happen. Move the mouse outside of the object and use method #2 before pressing the left button over the object of interest. You can always get the context mouse pointer by using method #3.
Along with context-sensitive help, most dialogs have a help button at the bottom of the form to display information about the dialog. All help is displayed from the manual. At the top of each manual chapter are links to take you to the table of contents and the previous chapter. At the bottom of each chapter are links to take you to the next chapter and the index. The online index uses hypertext links to display the content for an index.
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