Backup Documentation Confusion, v.4.0 - Anybody???

[gt4431b]

Hello,

I'm an alfresco newbie, just starting with 4c.  It's an absolutely lovely application out of the box.  My first concern in my shiny new repository is getting backup to work.  I've found the page on documentation here, but I'm guessing this page goes with the 3.x version – nothing I see on this page or similarly concerned pages seems to correspond to anything I see in my server.

For example:

• I don't have a backup-lucene-indexes directory.


• Instructions on how to force a lucene backup point me to an MBean at

  Alfresco/Schedule/DEFAULT/MonitoredCronTrigger/indexBackupTrigger/Operations‍

  .  I've walked up and down the MBean tree but I can't find anything remotely close to this.


• There's no mention of SOLR in the instructions; I know that SOLR is just lucene with a shiny car sitting on top of the engine – SOLR documentation has the best metaphors ever – but especially as I see lots of SOLR MBeans (none of which have operations) I'm beginning to be really concerned that I'm reading the wrong docs.

Am I wrong to be so hornswoggled?  Or are there plans to correct this documentation?  I can't trust my lovely alfresco repo fully until I can back it up nice and securely.

- Bill

Update: Almost two weeks, lots and lots of views … no responses.  Does anybody not know anything about this?  Any crumb?  Any spec?

[kqfflo]

Hi gt4431b,

I'm facing this problem aswell. There is an Alfresco 4 documentation but it seems to be quite incomplete and unlinked.
If possible, I try to compare the taken steps with the Alfresco 3.x docs - and all the rest : google for the win

Regarding your "backup issue" :: I actually prefer the "cold backup".

Cold Backup Procedure:

By default, the dir.root contains both the content and indexes, and it is possible to backup just the content and then do a full reindex when a backup is restored. A full reindex can be a time consuming process however, so the steps below include the indexes in the backup. !! Have you read, that it takes a long time for reindexing? It really does, but we can live with that, since our Alfresco 4.0c only handles about 21GB of data (35% docs, 65% zip-files)!!

1. Stop Alfresco.


2. Backup the database Alfresco is configured to use, using your database vendor's backup tools.


3. Backup the Alfresco dir.root directory in its entirety.


4. Store both the database and Alfresco dir.root backups together as a single unit. For example, store the backups in the same directory or compressed file.


5. Start Alfresco.

This can be found here
The restore is as simple as the backup. And most of the steps in the above mentioned link helped me to upgrade from 4.0a to 4.0c

BR
Florian

[damucksta]

Sorry, thicko question:

I have 4.0b installed (Debian package) and am using the bundled Postgres server. I want to script a basic backup procedure which I think would be something along the lines of (according to the wiki):

1. backup the postgres db
2. tar up and back up whole of alf_data to some backup location

I'd imagine the backed up db and the alf_data need to be 'syncronised' (excuse if this is the wrong term) in that it would be advisable to stop alfresco before doing these two steps.

The problem then comes in that, of course, by stopping alfresco using alfresco.sh, postgres is also shut down. As such, using pg_dump doesn't work because it cannot connect to the server.

I suppose I could backup the postgres db before shutting down alfresco, then copy out alf_data, but I can see an unlikely but possible scenario whereby a used, say, adds a document after the postgres backup starts but before the server is shut down to do the alf_data backup. I presume then a restore of the two out-of-sync elements might prove problematic.

Am I over-complicating this for myself?

Thanks for any guidance anyone might be able to give.

[mrogers]

Yes you are over complicating.

Yes the doc is missing instructions on how to backup solr.

And if you have switched off Lucene then there is nothing to back up.

But the basics will be the same.

[damucksta]

Thanks. Still not clear, though. I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer…

For a successful backup, I guess I have to backup the db and the alf_data folder. Does it matter if I backup the db with alfresco running, stop alfresco, then back up the alf_data dir?