Backing up storage pools

You can back up a primary storage pool to a copy storage pool to protect your data against a single point of failure in a storage device. If a scheduled backup of a storage pool fails, you can manually back up the storage pool from the Operations Center.

About this task

You might have set up a schedule for storage pool backups. You can check the time of the last backup of a storage pool by issuing the following command:
SELECT * FROM SUMMARY WHERE ACTIVITY='STGPOOL BACKUP' AND ENTITY LIKE 'filepool%'
where filepool represents the name of the primary storage pool. Make sure to include the percentage symbol (%) after the name.

If the results of the SELECT command indicate that a storage pool was not backed up at the scheduled time, you might want to manually back up the storage pool.

Restriction: The storage pool backup action applies only to volume-based storage pools. You cannot back up container storage pools, which store data in cloud repositories or in file system directories. To protect data in a directory-container storage pool, configure the server to replicate to a target server.

Procedure

To manually back up a storage pool, complete the following steps:

  1. On the Storage Pools page of the Operations Center, select the primary storage pool that you want to back up.
  2. Click Back Up, and follow the instructions in the Back Up Storage Pool window.
    Tips:
    • You can alternatively back up the storage pool by issuing the BACKUP STGPOOL command. You can specify more backup parameters by using this command.
    • To restore a storage pool, issue the RESTORE STGPOOL command.
    • For information about these commands, see the IBM Spectrum Protect documentation.