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AIX mksysb: Here’s Something Even Better
It’s alarming each time we hear that some AIX system administrators aren’t doing full-system backup. If you’re not backing up your applications and your operating system, you’re leaving your business vulnerable to extended downtime. If you’re like most sysadmins, you’ll probably say, “We’re OK—I use AIX mksysb to back up everything.” We can certainly see why you love mksysb so much. It’s a tremendous backup utility. But as we explained in our last article, AIX mksysb may not be backing up absolutely everything you need. And this fantastic utility may be costing you more than you think in manpower. So, there’s a tradeoff involved here.
AIX backup softwareAIX Backup: Why You Need More Than mksysb
In our last article, we discussed the challenges of backing up Linux on IBM Power servers. In a nutshell, sysadmins often wish there were a mksysb for Linux—but there isn’t. So they resort to using one of the various backup systems on the market. But most of them provide either data-only backup or image backup, neither of which offers the comprehensive, flexible backup functionality that will fully protect your business. It’s best to go with a file-level backup solution instead.