Best Practices for new AIX Agent users

[philfreund]

Is there any kind of Best Practices guide for the AIX agent? We are converting to the AIX Agent from TSM. It looks like we should use most of the same directory and filesystem excludes we used for TSM but recommendations and more information on what is automatically excluded (if anything) would be nice.

[philfreund]

Also, is there any way to prevent the backup of the Lost+Found directory on a global basis or do you have to specify it for each filesystem included in the backup job?

[PTide]

Hi,

Within the job log we provide information what is excluded:

Excluding /dev/fd
Excluding /devices
Excluding /etc/dfs/sharetab
Excluding /etc/mnttab
Excluding /etc/svc/volatile
Excluding /lib/libc.so.1
Excluding /proc
Excluding /system/contract
Excluding /system/object
Excluding /tmp
Excluding /var/run

and all network filesystems.

We also exclude lost+found (you can check that if you include some directory and then check inside the backup)

Thanks!

[philfreund]

Good information. It should be in the User Guide.

[philfreund]

Unfortunately the list provided is inaccurate. I just ran the most simple job possible: --includedirs /
The only exclusions listed in the job log were:

The following paths will be excluded:
{
/tmp/veeam
/var/share/sstore/repo
/proc
/proc
}

As stated, network attached filesystems were also not included

Although not noted in the job log, lost+found directories were excluded

However, the following directories which should excluded automatically need to be included as excludedirs entries on every job that begins at the system root directory /

/dev
/var/adm/ras/livedump

The /tmp filesystem was included in the backup. Since it is preserved across boots in AIX (unlike Solaris and Linux), that may be OK as a site-specific choice.

/devices, /etc/dfs/sharetab, /etc/mnttab, /etc/svc/volatile, /system don't exist in AIX

[PTide]

However, the following directories which should excluded automatically need to be included as excludedirs entries on every job that begins at the system root directory /

/dev
/var/adm/ras/livedump

I am sorry, but I am not sure that I understand the request. You want to exclude /dev, /var/adm/ras/livedump by default? Please elaborate.

/devices, /etc/dfs/sharetab, /etc/mnttab, /etc/svc/volatile, /system don't exist in AIX

Right, I must have mistakenly copied the list for Solaris. We'll double-check the lists and will update both AIX and Solaris agent user guides shortly and I'll post links in this thread.

Another question - would you like the default exclusions list to be adjustable? For example, an additional parameter in /etc/veeam.ini

Thanks!

[philfreund]

Having the default exclusion lists adjustable would be great.

The reason I want /dev and /var/adm/ras/livedump automatically excluded is that like /proc, they are of no use for a restore. /dev is the device tree and really can't be restored so there's no point wasting the space to back it up. /var/adm/ras/livedump is the target for system dumps; I don't see why anyone would need to restore system dumps and again there's no point in wasting the backup space.

One new question though: For a high-level directory that has multiple mount points under it, will an excludedirs for the top level exclude all the data under it including the mounted filesystems? Example:
/foo
/foo/alpha
/foo/bravo
/foo/charlie.txt

Mounted filesystems: /foo/alpha and /foo/bravo

Would --excludedirs /foo exclude everything under /foo including the mounted filesystems?

[PTide]

For a high-level directory that has multiple mount points under it, will an excludedirs for the top level exclude all the data under it including the mounted filesystems?

In your example --excludedirs /foo will exclude everything under /foo including the mounted file systems.

Thanks!