[gpfsug-discuss] mmbackup vs SOBAR

[Jonathan Buzzard]

On 09/03/2023 18:22, Stephan Graf wrote:

> Hi Rob,
> 
> we in Jülich have a long history and experience using GPFS & HSM.
> We don't use SOBAR (which is for disaster recovery) but mmbackup (single
> file restore).
> In principle it is working fine. But there are two problems.
> 
> The first one is if the user rename the file/directory. If renamed, the
> file(s) must be backed up again and will trigger a recall(inline tape
> copy). The same happens if ACLs are modified on files.
> This is working, but if we are scaling up (1K ore more files are
> effected, we are storing >40PB in these file systems), the inline tape
> copy for backup is not tape optimized and will take a long time.
> 

In the context of an "archive" file system as per Robert's original post 
I think that it reasonable and even a good idea to scan the file system 
and have all files over a couple of weeks old set immutable. That stops 
users renaming/moving files and triggering mass recalls. It's supposed 
to be an archive after all so you should not be doing that anyway.

I also think that in context of an "archive" files system a reasonable 
approach is also to set very low quotas on the number of files a user is 
allowed. The idea is to "encourage" them to put the archived data in 
things like a zip or tar file. Again it's an "archive" not a general 
purpose file system.


JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                         Tel: +44141-5483420
HPC System Administrator, ARCHIE-WeSt.
University of Strathclyde, John Anderson Building, Glasgow. G4 0NG