Deployment Server backups?

Hi All,

As we are an Oracle DB shop, what do you do to get "proper" backups of your DS MSDE databases?

1. Purchase MS SQL Enterprize Manager
2. Purchase SQL Agent for backup software (we use Veritas)
3. Detach /attach databases using scripts
4. Just use file level backups?
5. ???

Note: we have just gone live on 8.10 from XE, so this MSDE stuff is new to us.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.
Harry

You brought up a good point Harry.. I have never thought of backing up these DB's. My question is how often does the data change? If I don't have these DB's backed up how do I recover without SQL?

Anyway since you have a Veritas SQL Backup Agent you would not need to Detach\Attach the DB's as the agent would backup the open DB files. Since there is a cost for a license (we too use Veritas) it would make sense to create an SQL backup job and back it up to disk (estimated at 1GB) and then have a regular veritas backup agent backup the whole server.



Hi All,

As we are an Oracle DB shop, what do you do to get "proper" backups of your DS MSDE databases?

1. Purchase MS SQL Enterprize Manager
2. Purchase SQL Agent for backup software (we use Veritas)
3. Detach /attach databases using scripts
4. Just use file level backups?
5. ???

Note: we have just gone live on 8.10 from XE, so this MSDE stuff is new to us.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.
Harry

Hi winterc,

Actually I don't have the SQL agent, but am thinking of getting it.
As to your question about how often these DB's change?? Would they not change every time you load a new ESU in the system and apply that ESU to an environment?

The reason I started this thread is because we installed E8.10 on a set of test servers and upgraded the DV and PY environments. Then when we were ready to 'go live' we shutdown all services on the test servers and ran a 'normal' Veritas backup job. Then restored to the prod servers. (exp/imp of oracle tablespaces as well). When we checked the planner DB after restore, it didn't look correct, that's when the issue of 'correct' backup/restore of MSDE databases became an issue. We ended up detaching, backup, restore and reattaching to fix that. But what a pain!!

Anyways, further thoughts on this issue are welcome!!

Regards
Harry

If you buy a full version of SQL Server, then you'll have enterprise manager and you can do all the work you need from there.

A couple of points:

Make sure that you set the sa password - typically this is blank and it should never be!

You should create a domain account for the SQL Server and SQL Agent to run under that will have enough privledges to do what you need them to do.

Their are wizards that will allow you to create maintenance plans to backup your databases, transaction logs, optimize, check the databases, etc.

I would set the databases to full recovery mode (except master, tempdb and model, run a full backup daily and transaction logs periodically throught out the day - I have been getting by with every 6 hours on the transaction logs.

We had a array controller fail today - we didn't lose a thing, even though the transaction logs were on that drive!

This included our production data as we are strickly SQL Server.

With a domain account, you can backup to any disk on the network that the account has access to.

We run ours to another drive on the network with a 1g nic.

Those backups are then backed up to tape.

There is no need to detach/attach the databases.

File backups are useless, IMNSHO and as you ahve seen, they don't work.

These databases change frequently, version changes, PO changes, etc.

You do not want to lose these changes. You might be okay without a full recovery but I wouldn't bet my job on it.

Dave

Harry,

We do a cold backup on weekends of our Enterprise and Deployment servers. Our primary database is Oracle, but as you point out, the MSDE database exists on the Deployment server (JDELOCAL). We use Arcserve as our backup solution, and early on it gave us warnings about not being able to backup the MSDE database. So in our database shutdown script for our Deployment server, we added the following lines:
net stop "SQLAgent$JDELOCAL"
net stop "MSSQL$JDELOCAL"

Then, in our database startup script for our Deployment server, we added the following lines:
net start "MSSQL$JDELOCAL"
net start "SQLAgent$JDELOCAL"

I believe that this effectively shuts down MSDE so we get a good clean backup of the MSDE database. We are also no longer getting MSDE database warnings from Arcserve.

Is anyone else using this approach, or have any thoughts on it?

Hi,

I use OSQL to backup those databases from command line.
OSQL is like Query Analyzer but from a DOS Window.
I only backup them before ESUs, Plans and ASUs.

I have XE is there any databases we should take a backup i mean in the deployement server i use to take backup of the colmpete JDEdwardsEnterpriseOne folder and regestry files.

Anan,

Releases prior to 8.9 use MS Access files for the planner db. You should be fine so long as the files aren't in use at the time you backup the machine.