High Availability Strategy

In order to help you design your own strategy for backing up all of your Lotus servers while they are online, we are providing the following sample backup strategy. Please remember that your specific needs may not match this particular scenario, therefore you should carefully design your strategy to fit your situation.

For the purposes of this strategy, we are going to classify the data on our system as either

Lotus server data
Other user data
System data

In this example we have decided that we will backup the Lotus server data and the other user data daily. The system data only needs to be backed up weekly or monthly, depending on how often it is being changed (ie. by applying PTFs).

Backing up Lotus server data

In order to backup all Lotus Notes databases while they are online with zero synchronization time, use the STRBKUBRM command to backup the QLTSSVR control group that was created by BRMS.

STRBKUBRM CTLGRP(QLTSSVR) SBMJOB(*NO)

If you have multiple tape drives, you can use the individual control groups, ie...QLTSDOMxx, and send them down in batch to get concurrent use from your tape library.

You can also create your own control group(s) to tailor these backups according to your own particular needs..

In addition, you might wish to consider using an incremental online backup strategy if:

You are pushing the 24 hour limit.
You want to use less tapes.
You want point in time recovery of data.

Go to the BRMS incremental online Lotus server backup to understand this process.

Backing up other user data

You can backup the rest of the non-Lotus user data using Save While Active(SWA). This data can all be saved while your Lotus servers are online. You will need to create a BRMS/400 control group similar to the following control group:

 Group . . . . . . . . . . : SYSWODOM

 Default activity . . . . : FFFFFFF

 Text . . . . . . . . . . : Backs up all user data except notes

                         Weekly 	Retain 	Save 	SWA
     Backup      List    Activity 	Object 	While 	Message
 Seq Items       Type    SMTWTFS 	Detail 	Active 	Queue
 10  *EXIT               *DFTACT 	  	  	 
 20  *SAVSECDTA          *DFTACT 	*NO 	  	 
 30  *SAVCFG             *DFTACT 	*NO 	  	 
 40  *ALLUSR             *DFTACT 	*ERR 	*YES 	*LIB
 50  *ALLDLO             *DFTACT 	*NO 	*YES 	 
 60  QLTSEXCL    *LNK    *DFTACT 	*YES 	*YES 	*LIB
 70  *EXIT               *DFTACT

The QLTSEXCL link list (sequence 60 above) which is automatically created by BRMS/400, will backup all link data not being backed up by the QLTSSVR control group above

Backing up system data

You will need to backup the system data once a week or month, based on the activity within this area (ie...applying ptfs,etc) Your Lotus servers will need to be offline during this operation, as the system must be in restricted state.

You can start by copying the *SYSGRP control group and include the QIBMLINK link list. An example is shown below:

 Group . . . . . . . . . . : RESTRICTED

 Default activity . . . . . *BKUPCY

 Text . . . . . . . . . . . Backs up all system data

 Type information, press Enter.

                      Weekly    Retain  Save    SWA
      Backup    List  Activity  Object  While   Message
 Seq  Items     Type  SMTWTFS   Detail  Active  Queue
 10   *EXIT           *DFTACT 	  	  	 
 20   *SAVSYS         *DFTACT 	  	  	 
 30   *IBM            *DFTACT  *NO      *NO 	 
 40   QIBMLINK  *LNK  *DFTACT  *NO      *NO 	 
 50   *EXIT           *DFTACT

Conclusion

This strategy is not for every Notes/400 customer, but it does provide information that will help provide your Notes/400 users more access to their mail, with less down time. There are quite a few ways to alter this strategy in order to fine tune it for your specific configuration. (ie...moving the *ALLDLO to the once a week/month control group.)