Backup and Restore of HACMP Cluster

HP OpenView Storage Data Protector
Backup and Restore of HACMP Cluster 3
1. Introduction
This Whitepaper provides a guideline for how to configure HP OpenView
Storage Data Protector for backup/restore of an Informix Database running in an
IBM High Availability Cluster Multi-processing environment (HACMP) for AIX. The
cluster software that we are addressing is HACMP Version 5.x. Informix version
which we have tested and covered in this whitepaper is IDS 9.40.
It describes the steps necessary for the installation and configuration of Data
Protector 5.1 and 5.5 in this type of an environment. Performance is not a focus
of this Whitepaper as it only describes the concepts of this type of backup.
The Whitepaper starts with an overview of a HACMP Cluster. Then it covers the
installation of HP OpenView Storage Data Protector for the backup/restore of an
Informix Database running in a HACMP Cluster. It explains the procedure used
for configuring Data Protector to be able to perform backup/restore of the data
on the Informix Database.
2. Overview of HACMP Cluster
The IBM solution for building UNIX-based mission-critical computing environments
is the HACMP software. The HACMP software ensures that critical resources,
such as applications, are available for processing. HACMP has two major
components: high availability (HA) and cluster multi-processing (CMP).
The primary reason to create HACMP clusters is to provide a highly available
environment for mission-critical applications. For example, an HACMP cluster
could run a database server program which services client applications. The
clients send queries to the server program which responds to their requests by
accessing a database, stored on a shared external disk.
In an HACMP cluster, to ensure the availability of these applications, the
applications are put under HACMP control. HACMP takes measures to ensure
that the applications remain available to client processes even if a component in
a cluster fails. To ensure availability, in case of a component failure, HACMP
moves the application (along with resources that ensure access to the
application) to another node in the cluster.
The figure below shows a typical HACMP Cluster setup: