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Date:         Mon, 9 Nov 1992 11:52:02 PST
              <ADVANC-L@IDBSU.BITNET>
From:         hye_ok_park@CSUFRESNO.EDU
Subject:      Re: questions: backup & cal. processing
              at Nov 7, 92 10:39 am

Dear Minh Thu,

Your questions are exactly the same as the ones that I had a few
months ago.  Some have been answered mostly by trial and error but
others still need to be answered.  I really wish Geac would develop a
systems manager's manual which can be used effectively by system managers.
I have marked my responses with three asterisks below.

> Hello everyone!
> We now reached the point in the implementation where we have to make
> schedule for overnight jobs. I have questions concerning 2 main areas:
> backups and calendar processing.
>
> BACKUPS:
> Probably as do many sites, we have 2 cassette units: 150 MB and 2.3 GB
> to make backups. Geac advised us to backup / and /usr in the 150 MB
> unitand Universe/ADVANCE in the Exabyte, every night. My questions:
> - how many full weeks do you keep, if full backups are done every night?

*** We backup / and /usr on a 9track tape once a week and do a full
backup of ADVANCE files on two Exabyte tapes every night.  The ADV
backups take 6.5 hours to copy and 5.5 hours to verify,
with a total running time of 12 hours. We use crons to do the
backups but do need a person to come in between 10 and 11 p.m. to put
away the first tape and insert the second tape.  I am still not sure
whether we should continue with verifying process, since it merely
checks the tape data and not cross check with data on disks.  It was
Geac's recommendation that we do.

    We have designated two Exabyte tapes per night for each day of the
month.  In other words, one tape gets used once per month, incurring 24
reads and writes for the year.  We decided to do this in order to keep
track of tape usage and aging. ***


> - do you keep any backup in off-site storage? and which ones?

*** No.  But we probably should.

> - since there is no way to recover data added since your last full back-
>   up (I understand so), is there anything that we can do to make things
>   easier if we need to restore, say after a disk failure?
>
> CALENDAR PROCESSING:
> - is there any problem if two calendar processors (ex. circ and acq) are
>   running jobs at the same time during the night?
> - is it possible that the job you schedule for 5:00 am starts when the
>   one scheduled at 4:30 am is still running, and what would happen then?
>   (or jobs run sequentially one AFTER another?)

*** I believe that the jobs are run sequentially one after another; if
one did not finished on time, the next one would wait in the queue.
Once we had a statement which was to run at 4:30 a.m. and kept running
all day long until it was killed and then the next job picked up.

> - do you schedule all calendar jobs after the backups?

*** Yes, although we are running into problem lately since we started
verifying after backups.  The real backup part#2 starts at 11:00 p.m.
and finishes just before 3:00 a.m., at which time circ. calendar jobs
start and run concurrently while backup is verified.  But since verify
is only for tapes, I believe it is O.K. to have calendar jobs go on
while verify continues.

> - we plan to run PO, notices, etc. during the night and have staff do
>   their own printing when it is convenient to them. However, in order to
>   do this, they need to have acces to the same menu where jobs can be
>   executed, or is there any other way?

*** We are not up with ACQ yet, but do have Circ. calendar run holds,
notices, and invoices at night and have them printed automatically.
All that needs to be done in the morning is to have Circ. people pick
up the notices without logging into the any menu.  It has worked very
well.

>
> A few extra questions:
> - what are your practices concerning staff running their own reports?
>   is it allowed or is it not? is it allowed during the daytime?

*** After getting burnt a few times with slow or hung processes, we
have centralized running of the reports.  I run
all the reports at the request of different Depts. and try to run them
early in the morning like 7:30 a.m. or later at night.  The serious
problem with running reports is that nowhere users are told how long
and cpu-intensive each report is and WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.  I have found
much to my chagrin that the longer time a report takes to run the less
useful it is.

> - am I right in saying that all the standard reports DO NOT update data
>   in the system? How do one kill such a job if necessary?

*** I do not think any of the reports update data in the system.  They
simply report.  I usually monitor a job by giving "ps -aux" command to
see the CPU time it takes and do a soft kill, if it runs over 90% CPU
time and slows down all other processes.  Rarely I have to do a -9
kill on reports.

> I will appreciate any advice or comment you can give. Thank you for your
> co-operation. Please leave your phone mumber if possible.
> Minh-Thu Nguyen
>

*** I would have wanted to send this message directly to Minh-Thu but
could not find the his/her(?) address readily.  So please pardon me
for sending a long message to everyone on the list.  Please feel free
to make comments on my responses now that you have read them.  I could
use lots of help in polishing up our operation.

Hye Ok Park (Mrs.)
hye_ok_park@csufresno.edu
Calif.State Univ., Fresno
(209)278-6528
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU