Administrative files to back up

Although ON-Bar backs up some critical administrative files, you must also include critical files in normal operating-system backups of important configuration files.

Files that ON-Bar backs up

When you back up a storage space, ON-Bar also backs up the following critical files:
  • The onconfig file
  • UNIX™: The sqlhosts file
  • The ON-Bar emergency boot file: ixbar.servernum
  • The server boot file: oncfg_servername.servernum
You must restore these files if you need to replace disks or if you restore to a second computer system (imported restore).
Look at the bar_act.log file to determine whether critical files are successfully backed up. The return code for the onbar -b command indicates only whether storage spaces are successfully backed up. The following lines from the bar_act.log file show that the ON-Bar emergency boot file, ixbar.0, is backed up:
Begin backup of critical file '/opt/informix-11.70.fc7/etc/ixbar.0'.
Completed backup of critical file '/opt/informix-11.70.fc7/etc/ixbar.0'

Files that you must manually back up

In addition to the critical files, you must also manually back up the following administrative files:
  • The sm_versions file
  • Storage-manager configuration and data files
  • Simple-large-object data in blobspaces that are stored on disks
  • Simple-large-object data in blobspaces that are stored on disks or optical platters
  • Externally stored data such as external tables that a DataBlade® maintains
  • The keystore and stash files for encrypting storage spaces, as specified by the DISK_ENCRYPTION configuration parameter
Tip: Even though ON-Bar includes the critical files with the files it backs up, it is a good practice to also include the critical files in your system archive. Having the critical files included in both the HCL OneDB™ and system archives gives you more options if you need them.

Files that ON-Bar re-creates

Although ON-Bar does not back up the following items, ON-Bar automatically re-creates them during a restore. You do not need to make backup copies of these files:
  • The dbspace pages that are allocated to the database server but that are not yet allocated to a tblspace extent
  • Mirror chunks, if the corresponding primary chunks are accessible
  • Temporary dbspaces

    ON-Bar does not back up or restore the data in temporary dbspaces. Upon restore, the database server re-creates empty temporary dbspaces.