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Large Database and mail applications for distributed computing continue to grow exponentially. Whether your business is as old as the hills or as new as E-commerce, databases and messaging systems have now become business critical, and the need for an effective backup and recovery solution have become apparent for many corporations.

Keeping database applications online, in production and more aligned with 24 x 7 operation will help the organizations bottom line. Not having to shut the database or messaging system down to perform backups seems like a sound business model and with Upstream's database and messaging systems "agents", the model can be reality!

Upstream provides the ability to quiese databases, execute scripts with pre and post backup conditional processing that helps provide a totally automated solution. The Upstream agents make it possible to back up large amounts of data within your scheduled backup windows. The agents provide the solution to the database administrator's problem of not enough time for backups, as they operate transparently to end users, and the reduction in the amount of data incremental backups provide will increase efficiency and reduce network load.

Innovation's membership in Oracles Backup Solution Provider (BSP) program allows FDR/UPSTREAM to operate as an Oracle Media Manager Library product to be used with Oracle Recovery Manager or Oracle Enterprise Backup Utility. The Oracle Recovery Manager is an extremely full featured backup facility and can be used with FDR/UPSTREAM to perform full, incremental and tablespace backups of databases, tablespaces and datafiles. Some of the features supported include multi channel backups, backup sets, image copies, stored scripts, Recovery Manager reports, tags, integrity checking and more. All of the powerful features of Recovery manager are now available to UPSTREAM users under both local and host control.

If you wish to avoid the complexity of Oracle's Recovery Manager but need more control and flexibility than simple file backups of Oracle databases, the FDR/UPSTREAM Backup Management Suite for Oracle databases may be your solution of choice. The FDR/UPSTREAM Backup Management Suite for Oracle databases includes a Backup Management tool (GUI written in Java) and command line utilities that include a scheduling utility, and backup and restore utility. The FDR/UPSTREAM backup management suite for Oracle databases primarily targets databases running in ARCHIVELOG mode and can take full advantage of FDR/UPSTREAM backup suite options, like ONLINE (hot) backups, incremental backups of REDO logs, and perform full database and tablespace media recovery

Multi Channel Support The new version 1.1.0.5 of Oracle Media Support (together with the new features of version of FDR/UPSTREAM) provides full support for multi-channel RMAN backups on all supported platforms: SUN Solaris, AIX, HP-UX to add the prior support for Windows NT. This results in dramatically improved performance.



FDR/Upstream provides a robust solution for the protection of critical Notes and Domino information, enabling online backups of Lotus Notes and Domino R5, R6 and R6.5 without disrupting user productivity. FDR/UPSTREAM supports Notes databases using the Lotus Notes backup API for Windows NT, AIX, Solaris and OS390 UNIX Systems Services. This means that UPSTREAM can perform online full backups of databases (even if in use) as well as incremental backups by backing up Notes transaction logs - essential if you are using transaction logging.

The Domino agent provides UPSTREAM the ability to perform on-line full and incremental backups of databases, even if in use, and also supports backing up Notes transaction logs. Upstream can also be used to recover a database in a disaster recovery and as well as a point in time recovery.

FDR/UPSTREAM also provides the ability to perform an incremental backup of Lotus Notes R4 databases by extracting only the changed Notes in a Notes or Domino Database using an Upstream program. With FDR/UPSTREAM only those modified notes (records) are included in the backup. Upstream also provides a command line option which allows you to migrate old data notes. This can be useful, for example, in generically migrating old email messages to a separate Notes database which can be migrated using Upstream migration.



FDR/UPSTREAM provides a Microsoft Exchange agent, which uses the Microsoft Exchange Client API for performing backups and restores. This is the method that Microsoft documents and expects backup vendors to use and is based on the idea that DS (directory database) and MDB (Information Store) will be backed up and restored in their entirety.

FDR/UPSTREAM also contains a Microsoft Exchange agent program that combines the hierarchical structures in the DS and MDB database into a single hierarchical structure and backs it up as though it were a file system. This new functionality allows the individual objects, mailboxes and folders to be backed up as a hierarchy of individual entities that can then be restored either individually or as a group.

FDR/UPSTREAM also includes a backup agent compatible with the Microsoft Extensible Storage Engine (ESE98) that allows online full and transaction log backups of Microsoft Exchange 2000 databases. Also supported is the Windows 2000 COM+ Class registration database, and Windows 2000 Certificate Server database.

Microsoft SQL Server FDR/UPSTREAM using a Microsoft backup API includes a backup agent for Microsoft SQL Server that allows online full and transaction log backups of SQL Server databases There are two methods for backing up a Microsoft SQL Server:

Microsoft SQL Server is a fully-functioning Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) which is hosted on a Windows NT Server system. It provides a number of backup and restore options that provide Database Administrators the flexibility they need to plan their database recovery strategy. FDR/UPSTREAM for Windows contains features that take advantage of some of the newer backup and restore options in Microsoft SQL Server to aid in the automation of backups and restores.

The main component for one option using FDR/UPSTREAM is to backup and restore a Microsoft SQL Server database is a file named MSSQL.EXE. This is a batch command file that can be executed from a Windows NT command line and provides all of the functionality required to perform backups and restores for a Microsoft SQL Server database.

The second option of backup of SQL Server is MSSQL.DLL. This uses an UPSTREAM PlugIn. A PlugIn is a shared library which is loaded into UPSTREAM when needed and extends UPSTREAM's capabilities without the use of an external program. A single backup can include files that may or may not use PlugIns and PlugIn types can be mixed.


Novell GroupWise

FDR/UPSTREAM provides an agent that performs online database support for Novell GroupWise 6.5. The agent was written especially for Novell GroupWise and uses a GroupWise specific API. This support uses the GroupWise Target Service Agent (GWTSA) the backup agent supplied with Novell GroupWise 6.5. The agent provides reliable backups of a running GroupWise system by successfully backing up open files and locked files, without having to shut the database down, rather than skipping them as a file-level backup facility would.

The UPSTREAM agent backs up standard GroupWise directories and files and is inherently simple to use. A full-system backup method only requires a single file spec to specify a backup of an entire GroupWise database system. UPSTREAM makes the GroupWise system appear as separate volumes for the domain database, the post office and the Document Management Services library. Within each "volume" are the files that comprise each of the facilities. This allows you to restore the entire GroupWise system, or any component down to just a single user's mailbox!

For GroupWise 7 we recommend using Novell TSAs, TSAFSGW and TSAFS and that’s about all that you have to do! You will be able to target the entire machine and backup the entire machine and get both the GroupWise as well as the filesystem data at the same time. Or you can just target the GroupWise volume/directories using the UNC name if you just wanted to backup the GroupWise data. This too will allow you to restore the entire GroupWise system, or any component down to just a single user's mailbox!

DB2 Universal Database

The FDR/Upstream support for IBM DB/2 Universal Server (UDB) is full-featured providing a backup agent that includes a user exit and supports Windows NT, OS/2, AIX, HP-UX, x86 Linux & Linux for zSERIES and Solaris systems. The FDR/UPSTREAM UDB agent features.


  • Online and offline backups
  • Tablespace level backups and restores
  • Includes a user exit for system generated incrementals if you are running in archive log mode
  • The user exit supports roll-forwards from user exit backups facility
  • Supports full backups as a "vendor DLL"
  • The database can be recreated directly from FDR/UPSTREAM backups!
  • Includes a user exit for system generated incrementals if you are running in archive log mode
  • The user exit supports roll-forwards from user exit backups

FDR/UPSTREAM now supplies an agent for backing up Oracle based
SAP R/3 databases. Systems supported include Windows NT, Windows 2000,
AIX, Solaris and HPUX.

Backups and restores are requested using SAP utilities (sapdba, brbackup, brarchive, etc.). These utilities will drive the FDR/UPSTREAM SAP backup
agent to perform the actual backups and restores. Virtually the entire
extended UPSTREAM functionality can be used including reporting, FDR/UPSTREAM/SOS local back-ups, etc.

FDR/UPSTREAM provides support for BMC's DataTools SQL-Backtrack for a number of their environments including (but not limited to):

  • Sun Solaris - Sybase, Informix and Oracle databases
  • HP HPUX- Sybase, Informix and Oracle databases
  • IBM AIX- Sybase, Informix and Oracle databases
  • Compaq Tru64
  • Windows NT- Oracle databases

SQLBacktrack is a BMC product providing complete backup and recovery of your databases. This includes issuing the appropriate commands to the database system, tracking backups, automatic restoration and more.

SQL-Backtrack provides the user interface including automation and tracks the data. Products that are written to their Open Backup Stream Interface (OBSI) then provide the backup storage. FDR/UPSTREAM is supplied with an OBSI interface program that can be used in conjunction with SQL-Backtrack to back up and restore your databases.

Pre & Post Processing ..Run Jobs

Preprocess and Postprocessing facilities are Upstream methods for an administrator to prepare a database for some action For some DBAs, it might mean quiese a database, while for other DBAs it could mean to run a SQL script or do work with transaction logs.

The way this could work is by submitting an Upstream OS390 batch job, that contacts the Upstream client, and executes the preprocess program, batch file or script file, resident on that machine, to be run immediately before the Upstream function. Once that is successfully completed, the next step in the job could be to start the actual backup of the database. If the preprocess or postprocess job fails (can't be run or returns a non-zero return code), the UPSTREAM function will not be performed, and the entire function will return a non-zero return code on the host.When the backup is completed the postprocessing facility could then be automatically executed.

The result is a totally automated method to safely and securely to backup your databases while providing information to both OS390 and database administrators on the success or failure of the operation!

Process Failed jobs can also be extremely useful in that they can run jobs which will notify support personnel in the event of a backup or other UPSTREAM job failure. For example, you can create a Process Failed job to run the Novell SEND command to notify users that a Novell server backup failed.

FDR/UPSTREAM includes features that allow remote computers (MVS and other workstation/servers) to run a batch file or program on a workstation/server or for you to submit existing host jobs. FDR/UPSTREAM OS390 MVS batch jobs send a return code indicating whether the requested function has successfully completed. For backups or restores, this return code indicates whether the backup or restore worked successfully (0 = success, 4 = minor problems, 8 = failure, 16 bad news) These return codes are often used with a OS390 Job scheduling system to determine whether to perform additional functions or provide notification to an administrator.

Given the differences between LAN and UNIX system return codes compared to OS390 return codes, they could be meaningless to each other. The OS390 mainframe has a long standing convention for how return codes work and don't relate to a server/workstation program return code, as it often is simply 0 for successes and non-zero for failure. To help equate the two, Upstream provides a mapping facility for server/workstation return codes to host return codes. Using the Return Code Map feature, allows you to map the job return code to a condition code consistent with the way that OS390 host condition codes work.

These are several examples of the coordinated and cohesive support Upstream provides for large database applications that make the DBA and OS390 storage administrator a team protecting the corporation's databases assets.



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