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| Revised | : | January 4, 2006 (mc) |
| Version | : | All Versions of ILLiad |
| Revision | : | 1 |
SUMMARY
The most crucial component of the ILLiad system is the SQL database. Most other components can be replaced, but the SQL Server database contains all of the request history, users, tracking and customization settings for the ILLiad system. It is imperative to have regular and safe backup copies of the ILLData database.
MAKING A SINGLE BACKUP OF ILLDATA
You should see a "Backup in Process" message followed by a "Backup Operation has Completed Successfully" message. Once the second message is displayed, the database has been backed up. The file that was created (i.e. c:\illiad\backup\ILLData20030101.bak) is a copy of the entire ILLData database that could be used to restore on another machine. This file should be backed up to another external media such as a tape drive etc.
SCHEDULING REGULAR BACKUPS OF ILLDATA
To schedule regular backups of the ILLData database, you can follow the same directions as above only check the schedule option at the bottom of the screen and choose the ... button at the right to change it.
Once on the Edit Schedule form, give your schedule a name (Daily at 10pm, for example). Leave the Recurring radio button chosen and click the Change button at the right to edit it. You can setup whatever schedule you want, but ideally you should have one job that appends to the file and another job that overwrites that file once a week. For example, you can have the first job run daily at 10pm and append to the file (changing it to append with the radio button on the SQL Server Backup form). Then make a second job that writes to the same file and overwrites it once a week, say Wednesday at 6am. This would provide a backup file that had several database copies in it from each night (to allow you to catch a change that happened several days ago) and then overwrite it once a week to prevent the file from growing too large.
You can schedule your backup to overwrite each night as long as you are then copying that backup file to another location that would have a week's supply of backups. So if you backed that file up to tape each night after the SQL backup job ran, you would not need to append to the SQL job (using overwrite options) within SQL Server.
VIEWING/MANAGING BACKUP SCHEDULES
To view any scheduled backups you may have in SQL Server Enterprise Manager, go to Microsoft SQL Servers - SQL Server Group -YourServerName - Management - SQL Server Agent - Jobs. Any backup jobs you have will be listed under Jobs. Double-click on a job to see its properties. You can change the schedule for that job or add notifications for success and/or failures. The SQL backup job itself is a SQL script stored in Step 1 of the Steps. An example of the script is:
BACKUP DATABASE [ILLData] TO DISK = N'c:\illiad\backup\ILLDataBackup.bak' WITH INIT , NOUNLOAD , NAME = N'ILLData Backup to Hard Drive - Overwrite', NOSKIP , STATS = 10, NOFORMAT
The job above is backing up to c:\illiad\backup\ILLDataBackup.bak and overwriting that file (WITH INIT). The name of the job in SQL is "ILLData Backup to Hard Drive - Overwrite." The only difference you may see for the other jobs would be the tag for appending (WITH NOINIT) instead of overwriting (WITH INIT).
As a note, be sure that your SQL Server Agent is running or none of the scheduled backup jobs will execute. You can check that service under Services in the Control Panel .. Administrative Tools. Be sure that SQLServerAgent is set to Automatic startup and is currently running.
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