Backing up CSCOpx directory to tape. Files are locked.

[henniae]

LMS 2.5.1 (installed on D:\)

Windows 2003 (installed on C:\)

Can anyone give me a bit of advice on how they are do tape back ups up LMS for off site storage? I run the database backup script and store the backups that it creates on a separate directory that is backed up to tape.

My server admins also run nightly tape backups of all the drives in every windows server. This causes problems because the database engine locks the LMS database files. My server admins are complaining that they have backup failures because of the locked files and have asked that I provide a list of what should be excluded from backup in the D:\CSCOpx directory.

What are some of you folks doing? Do you just exclude the entire d:\CSCOpx directory from periodic backups?

I want to be able to restore D:\CSCOpx if I need to. I know I could just reinstall all the applications but this takes a lot of work to install LMS and all the patches. I would like to be able to restore the D:\CSCOpx directory and then just restore one of my database backups and be back online.

[Marvin Rhoads]

If you could stop the server (could use an AT script to stop the daemon manager - "net stop crmdmgtd"), the files would be unlocked and this able to be backed up. Perhaps a weekly backup would suffice for your server. They must have other db servers (Oracle, SQL server, whatever) which similarly lock their active dbs.

Alternatively, back up all the non-locked files and run the db backup utility locally (Server configuration -- Administration -- Database management). I'm not sure if this can be CLI-automated. The backup file would be sitting in a non-locked state on the target directory and drive of your choosing.

[henniae]

Thanks for the input

We do have other DB servers with locked files and we exclude the database files and backup them up other ways. But we still backup the application files incase we need to restore them.

I would like to avoid shutting down LMS for the backup. I have a global user base and never know exactly when someone has scheduled a job or some other function. I could setup a normal maintenance window when LMS would not be available. Higher availability is one of the goals.

But this brings up a good question. Does the Cisco provided backup program stop the daemons to do a backup or is it doing a live backup. If I start the Cisco backup program at 1:00 AM and it finishes at 3:00 AM, are all LMS applications totally down for 2 hours?