Back up and restore guidelines
These guidelines provide recommendations for backing up and restoring the IBM FileNet P8 Platform. The specific procedures implemented at your site will depend on the P8 architecture at your site and your tolerance for downtime.
- FileNet P8 Platform does not support hot backups (that is, backups performed while the database is online and available for reading and writing.) You must shut down each P8 component before you back it up. This requirement ensures proper synchronization (for example, between stored content and associated metadata). Contact your service representative if you have questions.
- IBM recommends that you use Veritas NetBackup (NBU) 6.0 to back up and restore P8 component servers and databases. Alternatively, for files you can use any backup utility that preserves the security settings on the files and folders being backed up; for databases, you can use the native database backup tool provided by the RDBMS vendor or any third-party backup tool to perform database backup.
- If the IBM FileNet P8 Platform must be available to users on a 24-hour basis, you may decide to implement a fault-tolerant, or fail-over, architecture. Note that a fail-over system is not a substitute for performing software backups. Deleted or corrupted files on the master computer will be deleted or corrupted on the backup computer as well.
- Backup does not include a complete server backup unless specifically noted. Because you can reinstall the software for
a P8 component at any time, you do not
need to back up the entire server. However, having a backup
ready can shorten the time it takes to restore a server.
- There is no way to ensure that the objects in a Process Engine isolated region are all associated with a single object store. For this reason, if a customer’s applications require multiple object stores and involve workflows, and the customer wants to back up object stores independently, the customer should consider putting the object stores in different P8 domains, each with its own workflow (Process Engine) database and Content Engine object store.
- IBM does not recommend backing up and restoring an individual object store. There may be conflicts between the restored object store and the current GCD that may or may not be resolvable.