[FASherman]

Regular backups of your HMC(s) is a must, by I find that many clients don't perform this on a regular basis. At best, they only think about this before upgrading HMC code. This is a big mistake.

You should preform a "Back up Critical Console Data" to DVD-RAM on a regular and consistant basis. This will back up all configuration data to DVD-RAM, capturing ALL changes made to the HMC since the last installation from the recovery CD - with one exception: partition profile data.

To be completely accurate, Back up Critical Console Data will backup partition profile data, but only if it is created first. To do that, do the following:

1. In the Contents area, select the managed system.
2. From the menu, click Selected > Profile Data > Backup.
3. Type the name you want to use for this backup file.
4. Click OK.

Now you're ready to Back up Critical Console Data, thus garanteeing you can rebuild (or replace) your current HMC configuration from the recovery CD.

I can't stress enough how important it is to do this on a regular basis. At a minimum, you should do this any time configuration changes are made to the system or the HMC. Even better would be to perform this on a regular, scheduled basis.

[FASherman]

I have expanded upon this topic in the newest tutorial, including how to automate HMC backups.

http://www.pseriestech.org/forum/tut...4.html#post177 (Backing UP Your Hardware Management Console)

Enjoy.

[wildchief]

excellent article. here is a similar one I found with graphics

David St.Clair - Backing Up IBM HMC using FTP

[The General]

Hi All,
Wonder if anyone knows how to backup a p4 HMC to a remote server ? The HMC is currently running Version 3 of the HMC code. I have p5 HMC's which I can have send their backups to a remote server but the options do not seem to be available for the p4 HMC. Can the p4 HMC be upgraded to version 6 ? Or any other valid ideas ?

Thanks

[duke900ssd]

Power 4 machines need the HMC to be no later than V3.3.7.
Later HMC code is for power 5 and power 6 systems only.

[Sena]

Is there a way to create "Profile Data Backup" automatically? I am trying to submit a scheduled "critical console data backup" but i want to be sure of that it also contains the latest lpar profiles and configurations.

Thanks in advance...

--
Sena

[duke900ssd]

You could set up a cron job to use the hmc bkprofdata command.
IBM Systems Information Center

[ross.mather]

What I do for bigger environments is to have a task run from an LPAR that nightly does an lssyscfg and lshwres for all lpars.

This is also human readable which is always helpful.

[Sena]

Thank you Duke and Ross for your answers, but I want to extend my concern a bit:

I was actually looking for a way to schedule this (lpar profile backup) job from HMC gui if it is possible; but it seems I cant do that in this way anyway. So; as Duke says, I need to add a cron job to HMC, but I am not sure if it is possible to do this with hscroot. Dont I need to have root access in order to do this? Or can I do this with hscroot?

And Ross; actually we are gathering those information from an lpar as you described but these information can be used as a last resort. Since we have huge amount of lpars located on numbers of frames. if we lost lpar informations under a frame we need a quick way to restore those lpar profiles. And I belive that the best and the fastest way is to restore latest profile backup.

thank for your helps.

--
Sena

[duke900ssd]

This page mentions automating HMC processes using the cron daemon of another system and how to set up secure script execution between an ssh client and the HMC:

IBM Systems Information Center