VERITAS Volume Manager 3.5 Administrator's Guide (September 2002)

Chapter 8, Administering Volumes

Backing up Volumes Online

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You can perform backup of a mirrored volume on an active system with these steps:

1. Dissociate one of the volume’s data plexes (vol01-01, for example) using the

following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] dis plex

Optionally, stop user activity during this time to improve the consistency of the

backup.

2. Create a temporary volume, tempvol, that uses the dissociated plex, using the

following command:

# vxmake -g diskgroup -U gen vol tempvol plex=plex

3. Start the temporary volume, using the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] start tempvol

4. Use fsck (or some utility appropriate for the application running on the volume) to

clean the temporary volume’s contents. For example, you can use this command:

# fsck -F vxfs /dev/vx/rdsk/diskgroup/tempvol

5. Perform appropriate backup procedures, using the temporary volume.

6. Stop the temporary volume, using the following command:

# vxvol [-g diskgroup] stop tempvol

7. Dissociate the backup plex from its temporary volume, using the following

command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] dis plex

8. Reassociate the backup plex with its original volume to regain redundancy of the

volume, using the following command:

# vxplex [-g diskgroup] att original_volume plex

9. Remove the temporary volume, using the following command:

# vxedit [-g diskgroup] rm tempvol

Note If the ﬁle system is active during the period that the temporary volume is created,

its contents may be inconsistent. For information on an alternative online backup

method using the VxVM snapshot facility, see the next section “Backing Up

Volumes Online Using Snapshots.”