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Backup and restore guidelines
Concepts
  Backup strategies
  Backup types
  Best practices
What to back up
Prepare backup tapes
Backing up the system state
Backing up Process Engine
Backing up Process Analyzer
Backing up databases
Restoring the system state
Restoring Process Analyzer
Restoring databases
   

Best practices for backing up and restoring data

Best practices for backing up data

  • Verify your backups by restoring them to a test server. Verifying the backup ensures that you are correctly capturing the data you need and that the data can be successfully restored to a server. All too often corrupt backups are discovered only after a system failure or file corruption has occurred.
  • Make an Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) for each Windows server. You can create an ERD with NTBackup.
    • Include the registry in the backup.
    • Re-create the ERD after every major system change such as applying service packs and updating device drivers.
    • Do not use the ERD to replace regular backups. An ERD can only fix some system problems (system files, partition boot sector, and startup environment).
  • If you plan to use a third-party backup tool, make sure the utility can back up the server's system state. NTBackup can backup the system state.
  • Avoid mixing incremental and differential backups. Mixing incremental and differential backups could complicate the restore process.
  • Use normal plus incremental backups. Using a normal backup followed by many small incremental backups requires the least amount of time and resources. For example, you could schedule normal backups at 11:00 PM the first Sunday of every month, then schedule incremental backups at 11:00 PM for all the other days.

    NOTE 
    Making incremental backups requires you to restore all incremental backups during a restore.
  • Perform database backups, not file backups, on database servers. Use the backup tool that comes with your database manager to perform backups on database servers. Although you can use NTBackup to perform a server backup on everything, including the databases, this type of backup is only suitable for small databases (less than 100 MB) and is not scalable. NTBackup includes the whole database every time. Using the native database tool to perform the backup gives you more control.
  • Mix transaction log backups with differential backups for database backups. You should schedule complete backups at long intervals, differential backups at medium intervals, and transaction log backups at short intervals. This enables you to restore a database more efficiently.
  • If you must back up the object store database and the file stores separately, back up the database portion first. This assumes that documents are deleted infrequently.
  • Schedule a backup for after-hours. For performance and data synchronization reasons, schedule backups during periods of minimal activities such as midnight to 5 AM. To synchronize the schedulers, use the NET TIME command. Both NTBackup and SQL Server include the ability to perform scheduled backups.
  • Use default file extensions for backup files. By default, SQL Server uses .bak as the extension for database backup files and NTBackup uses .bkf as the extension for backup files. Although these applications enable you to use any file extensions, using the default extensions enables the file filters to recognize the correct file types in file selection dialogs.
  • Do not mix backup sets created from different applications on a single tape. Although both NTBackup and SQL Server can use Microsoft Tape Format (MSTF), their backup sets don't work well when copied to the same tape.  

Best practices for restoring data

  • Before restoring a FileNet Process Engine or other FileNet component, review Windows Event Viewer to determine the source of the error. This may help to identify which FileNet component to restore.
  • Restore FileNet components to their original locations. The FileNet components share information, and the components must be in same the location after you restore them