Onbar is the best backup utility I have used with backing up and restoring
databases. RMAN can't come close. Once again, I would absolutely hate to
see Informix and its utilities disappear. I hate ORACLE!

-----Original Message-----
From: malcolm.weallans@btopenworld.com
[mailto:malcolm.weallans@btopenworld.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 12:12 PM
To: informix-list@iiug.org
Subject: Re: ontape vs onbar - the gospel according to malcolm


I would like to impart the benefit of my wisdom to this topic.

in the beginning there was Turbo. Turbo had to be stopped in order to
get consistent backups. It was not good, but verily it worked quite
well.

next came Online. Online was much better. It had this new utility
called ontape which allowed online archiving which meant that 24 by 7
performance could be provided. With the combination of backing up the
system and the logs recovery was possible to the point of the last
committed transaction.

But ontape was, and verily still is, very limited. It worked really
well if all the data could be archived to one tape drive. It worked
really well if it was operated in an attended fashion.

But sadly, ontape was not enough for many database administrators.
their databases could not be backed up to one tape, they wanted
unattended overnight backups, and they wanted to integrate the
archives and log backups into their enterprise backup systems. hence
onbar was born. It did virtually the same job as ontape but in a more
sophisticated way. The combination of onbar and ISM was the
equivalent of ontape, but offered even more flexibility in recovery,
including such things as point-in-time recovery.

But it is very apparent that there are many of you who have been in
the darkness about this for many years. maybe we should all learn
more about onbar, after all, an IBM Informix tech support person told
us today that ontape wasn't supported any more. Interesting!
sending to informix-list

"McCabe-Reed, Barbara SIK" <BReed@sikorsky.com> wrote in message
news:c5modn$rtb$1@terabinaries.xmission.com...
>
> Onbar is the best backup utility I have used with backing up and restoring
> databases.

You haven't used onarchive then? ;-)
Seriously, its quality depends to some extent on the integration with the
storage manager. The Omniback/Data Protector integration for Informix is
crap.

I tried onarchive once. It's the first fully-released software product
I've ever come across which I had to edit to get rid of a "fi
unexpected" error. Then I tried to use it with its volume management
features. I never did get it to work.

Thank heavens for onbar.

Andy


"Neil Truby" <neil.truby@ardenta.com> wrote in message news:<c5mr7m$3ikn0$1@ID-162943.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> "McCabe-Reed, Barbara SIK" <BReed@sikorsky.com> wrote in message
> news:c5modn$rtb$1@terabinaries.xmission.com...
> >
> > Onbar is the best backup utility I have used with backing up and restoring
> > databases.
>
> You haven't used onarchive then? ;-)
> Seriously, its quality depends to some extent on the integration with the
> storage manager. The Omniback/Data Protector integration for Informix is
> crap.

I think Neil has hit the nail on the head. The main difference
between ontape and onbar is the integration of onbar into the
enterprise storage manager.
This will never be a simple operation.
Informix provides a simple storage manager (Informix Storage Manager)
which provides support for multiple devices, parallel backups and
restores.

The major problems I have experienced when working with other storage
managers is understanding the terminology of the storage manager,
especially when the storage manager also supports other Database
products. It is difficult to back up servers and find that the
storage manager calls them databases for example.

I would suggest that we should add this topic to the FAQ but I have
found that the Informix backup and restore Guide, and Informix Storage
Manager Guide do adequately describe these issues.

regards

malcolm

"Neil Truby" <neil.truby@ardenta.com> wrote in message news:<c5mr7m$3ikn0$1@ID-162943.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> "McCabe-Reed, Barbara SIK" <BReed@sikorsky.com> wrote in message
> news:c5modn$rtb$1@terabinaries.xmission.com...
> >
> > Onbar is the best backup utility I have used with backing up and restoring
> > databases.
>
> You haven't used onarchive then? ;-)
> Seriously, its quality depends to some extent on the integration with the
> storage manager. The Omniback/Data Protector integration for Informix is
> crap.

"malcolm" <malcolm.weallans@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:3efc1745.0404160223.7b9bbe77@posting.google.c om...
> I think Neil has hit the nail on the head. The main difference
> between ontape and onbar is the integration of onbar into the
> enterprise storage manager.

> The major problems I have experienced when working with other storage
> managers is understanding the terminology of the storage manager,
> especially when the storage manager also supports other Database
> products. It is difficult to back up servers and find that the
> storage manager calls them databases for example.

The Informix integration is often an afterthought because of its perceived
lack of popularity. The integrations for Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server are
pretty good generally.