Is CDP available for VMS?

On Jul 24, 10:57=A0am, MXEditor <edi...@mxnewsfeed.com> wrote: > Wow, a VMS group! > > Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a > poor man's shadowcopy? > > Are there any products like this out there? > > I want to use it for DR. Ian's answered your question. I'll add to Ian's answer. With the greatest possible respect (honestly): If this is the level of your VMS expertise, and you are serious about DR and have the budget to match, your organisation might want to engage the services of a VMS high availability expert. I'm not one, but even I knew the initial answer to this question (without even looking at the VMS documentation). What I didn't know was how to answer the question as succinctly as Ian did. The other thing I noted from a quick websearch on "continuous data protection" is that whereas VMS Volume Shadowing has an exact technical definition (which might or might not match your definition of a "shadow copy", poor man's or otherwise), "continuous data protection" seems to be rather more loosely defined. Some care may be needed to make sure what you get matches what your DR facility wants/ needs. VMS and the associated storage controllers have various ways of configuring things for high availability, depending on the details of your needs. Best you seek advice from someone who knows these things well. I have no interest to declare, but there are folks round here who may be in a good position to help. Welcome to VMS, enjoy, good luck.

On Jul 24, 2:23=A0pm, John Wallace <johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > On Jul 24, 10:57=A0am, MXEditor <edi...@mxnewsfeed.com> wrote: > > > Wow, a VMS group! > > > Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a > > poor man's shadowcopy? > > > Are there any products like this out there? > > > I want to use it for DR. > > Ian's answered your question. I'll add to Ian's answer. > > With the greatest possible respect (honestly): If this is the level of > your VMS expertise, and you are serious about DR and have the budget > to match, your organisation might want to engage the services of a VMS > high availability expert. I'm not one, but even I knew the initial > answer to this question (without even looking at the VMS > documentation). What I didn't know was how to answer the question as > succinctly as Ian did. > > The other thing I noted from a quick websearch on "continuous data > protection" is that whereas VMS Volume Shadowing has an exact > technical definition (which might or might not match your definition > of a "shadow copy", poor man's or otherwise), "continuous data > protection" seems to be rather more loosely defined. Some care may be > needed to make sure what you get matches what your DR facility wants/ > needs. VMS and the associated storage controllers have various ways of > configuring things for high availability, depending on the details of > your needs. Best you seek advice from someone who knows these things > well. I have no interest to declare, but there are folks round here > who may be in a good position to help. > > Welcome to VMS, enjoy, good luck. I understand where you are coming from, but I actually do have a lot of large scale enterprise wide networking experience but I am no VMS (or any OS) guru. I am a networking guy...We have a VMS box we use for quote data and transactional purposes and I want to replicate this at a separate (DR) site. I want every update locally to be replicated across a WAN link to the other (DR) server. The vendor is claiming =A345K is shadowcopy licensing fees which sounds quite high. So a remote shadowcopy type of utility would be brilliant. Obviously different products exist in the Windows world that accomplish this simply and cheaply...but a canned solution for a VMS box? That is more of what I am looking for. Thanks!!

MXEditor wrote: > On Jul 24, 2:23 pm, John Wallace <johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: >> On Jul 24, 10:57 am, MXEditor <edi...@mxnewsfeed.com> wrote: >> >>> Wow, a VMS group! >>> Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a >>> poor man's shadowcopy? >>> Are there any products like this out there? >>> I want to use it for DR. >> Ian's answered your question. I'll add to Ian's answer. >> >> With the greatest possible respect (honestly): If this is the level of >> your VMS expertise, and you are serious about DR and have the budget >> to match, your organisation might want to engage the services of a VMS >> high availability expert. I'm not one, but even I knew the initial >> answer to this question (without even looking at the VMS >> documentation). What I didn't know was how to answer the question as >> succinctly as Ian did. >> >> The other thing I noted from a quick websearch on "continuous data >> protection" is that whereas VMS Volume Shadowing has an exact >> technical definition (which might or might not match your definition >> of a "shadow copy", poor man's or otherwise), "continuous data >> protection" seems to be rather more loosely defined. Some care may be >> needed to make sure what you get matches what your DR facility wants/ >> needs. VMS and the associated storage controllers have various ways of >> configuring things for high availability, depending on the details of >> your needs. Best you seek advice from someone who knows these things >> well. I have no interest to declare, but there are folks round here >> who may be in a good position to help. >> >> Welcome to VMS, enjoy, good luck. > > I understand where you are coming from, but I actually do have a lot > of large scale enterprise wide networking experience but I am no VMS > (or any OS) guru. I am a networking guy...We have a VMS box... What kind of "box" ? VMS systems can be of many different sizes/scales. VMS is VMS but it does set the size/volume of your VMS operations. > ...we use for > quote data and transactional purposes and I want to replicate this at > a separate (DR) site. Replicate on a transaction level ? Replication of a database (like Rdb) ? Replication of whole disk volumes (like shadowing) ? Distance between the sites ? Other side of the local site or 100s of km's ? > I want every update locally to be replicated > across a WAN link to the other (DR) server. Replicate when and how ? Inside the actual commit of an transaction ? Or hourly/daily ? > The vendor... Which "vendor" ? HP ? > ...is claiming �45K is shadowcopy licensing fees which sounds > quite high. Is that for "OpenVMS Shadowing" ? And compared to what ? Compared to the "value" protected by the product ? A specific price tag can be both high and low depending on what it is compared with, of course. > So a remote shadowcopy type of utility would be > brilliant. > > Obviously different products exist in the Windows world that > accomplish this simply and cheaply... Name one or two so we can look at it and see what they does. And we might compare with the offerings for VMS. > but a canned solution for a VMS > box? That is more of what I am looking for. > > Thanks!!

MXEditor wrote: > Wow, a VMS group! > > Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a > poor man's shadowcopy? > > Are there any products like this out there? > > I want to use it for DR. I believe that there is such a product. The company offering it has a reputation for abusing software licenses. They are not the sort you want to deal with if you can possibly avoid it. I will not mention any names but I believe that one of the regulars here can supply the sordid details! He knows who he is and will comment if he feels like it. ;-)

MXEditor wrote: > Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a > poor man's shadowcopy? The term Volume Shadow Copy in Microsoft terms is different from the OpenVMS usage. For OpenVMS, host-based Volume Shadowing software does synchronous mirroring, and a Shadow Copy operation refers to making a newly-added member of the mirrorset identical in contents to the data already on the mirrorset. Continuous Data Protection refers to the ability log all changes to data such that you can go back to any specific point in time and look at the data as of that point in time. You can pull one member out of an OpenVMS shadowset on-the-fly to create a point-in-time copy as of a single instant in time, but it doesn't log changes individually or allow you to pick any arbitrary point in past time as CDP implies. > Are there any products like this out there? > > I want to use it for DR. Many OpenVMS customers use Host-Based Volume Shadowing software to mirror disks synchronously to another site for DR purposes. Others use controller-based mirroring products such as Continuous Access on EVA or XP storage subsystems, or database-based replication of transactions like Oracle provides, or other database log-shipping techniques. I have a comparison of HBVS and controller-based mirroring in OpenVMS environments at http://www2.openvms.org/kparris/HPTF2006_HBVS_cf_CA.ppt and there's a lot of info about OpenVMS and Disaster Recovery and OpenVMS Volume Shadowing at that same website.

Keith Parris wrote: > MXEditor wrote: >> Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a >> poor man's shadowcopy? > > The term Volume Shadow Copy in Microsoft terms is different from the > OpenVMS usage. > > For OpenVMS, host-based Volume Shadowing software does synchronous > mirroring, and a Shadow Copy operation refers to making a newly-added > member of the mirrorset identical in contents to the data already on the > mirrorset. > > Continuous Data Protection refers to the ability log all changes to data > such that you can go back to any specific point in time and look at the > data as of that point in time. OK. It that case it's more like an point-in-time recovery using AIJ transaction logs in Rdb. If they are running (something like) Rdb. I do not see this need for regular "files"...

MXEditor wrote: > On Jul 24, 2:23 pm, John Wallace <johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: >> On Jul 24, 10:57 am, MXEditor <edi...@mxnewsfeed.com> wrote: >> >>> Wow, a VMS group! >>> Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a >>> poor man's shadowcopy? >>> Are there any products like this out there? >>> I want to use it for DR. >> Ian's answered your question. I'll add to Ian's answer. >> >> With the greatest possible respect (honestly): If this is the level of >> your VMS expertise, and you are serious about DR and have the budget >> to match, your organisation might want to engage the services of a VMS >> high availability expert. I'm not one, but even I knew the initial >> answer to this question (without even looking at the VMS >> documentation). What I didn't know was how to answer the question as >> succinctly as Ian did. >> >> The other thing I noted from a quick websearch on "continuous data >> protection" is that whereas VMS Volume Shadowing has an exact >> technical definition (which might or might not match your definition >> of a "shadow copy", poor man's or otherwise), "continuous data >> protection" seems to be rather more loosely defined. Some care may be >> needed to make sure what you get matches what your DR facility wants/ >> needs. VMS and the associated storage controllers have various ways of >> configuring things for high availability, depending on the details of >> your needs. Best you seek advice from someone who knows these things >> well. I have no interest to declare, but there are folks round here >> who may be in a good position to help. >> >> Welcome to VMS, enjoy, good luck. > > I understand where you are coming from, but I actually do have a lot > of large scale enterprise wide networking experience but I am no VMS > (or any OS) guru. I am a networking guy...We have a VMS box we use for > quote data and transactional purposes and I want to replicate this at > a separate (DR) site. I want every update locally to be replicated > across a WAN link to the other (DR) server. > > The vendor is claiming �45K is shadowcopy licensing fees which sounds > quite high. So a remote shadowcopy type of utility would be > brilliant. > > Obviously different products exist in the Windows world that > accomplish this simply and cheaply...but a canned solution for a VMS > box? That is more of what I am looking for. > > Thanks!! I don't know which vendor you mean or what product the vendor has offered to you, but if it concerns the OpenVMS Volume Shadowing license, the price is really high. That would be a price for the biggest (AlphaServer) computers. I somehow feel that the machines you have are smaller ones, because the amount of data you mentioned is small. You can look for yourself at the pricelist of the OpenVMS Volume Shadowing to get a picture of the license costs. http://h71000.www7.hp.com/swcat/us/volshadovs.html

Richard B. Gilbert wrote: > MXEditor wrote: >> Wow, a VMS group! >> >> Question - is Continuous Data Protection available for VMS? Sort of a >> poor man's shadowcopy? >> >> Are there any products like this out there? >> >> I want to use it for DR. > > I believe that there is such a product. The company offering it has a > reputation for abusing software licenses. They are not the sort you > want to deal with if you can possibly avoid it. > > I will not mention any names but I believe that one of the regulars here > can supply the sordid details! He knows who he is and will comment if > he feels like it. ;-) If looking for remote shadowing I urge folks to have the respect for the inventor of the concept: Larry Robertson, of Bearsoft.com (Bear Software). He thought of this method and implemented, though he has not had the marketing force of later implementors. However a shadow driver will NOT protect against most data loss situations since what is clobbered on one drive gets clobbered on all others. I proposed (and I think wrote) a virtual disk that ran on VMS and would write blocks that were written to a journal, labelling with date and time and block number, as well as to a disk image. The nice thing about this was that if you had a copy of the initial disk and the journal, you could roll the copy forward to any time after. There are obvious limitations (since the write journal grows without limit). If I recall right in the end I did one where the system updated the whole thing every 15 or 20 minutes and used a "memory disk" (actually used page file) for data, but the full blown journal scheme could be used. VMS RMS journalling might achieve much the same thing, though for file at a time rather than whole device. You get what you want. Glenn Everhart

glenn everhart wrote: > However a shadow driver will NOT protect against most data loss > situations since what is clobbered on one drive gets clobbered on all > others. In my experience, most data loss situations involve failure of a disk, or occasionally a controller subsystem, and in these cases a shadow driver DOES protect against data loss. Where I've seen the worst data losses are customers whose Storage salespeople convinced them that since controllers now did mirroring, and had great internal redundancy, they no longer needed to do host-based Volume Shadowing anymore. A water sprinkler going off above their fancy high-end storage box, or a disk group "meltdown" on their midrange box, then caused all their data to be lost.