Purpose of backup-lucene-indexes

[theorbix]

What is the actual purpose of the backup-lucene-indexes under /alf_data?

It's clearly a backup of the main Lucene full-text index structure that is located in /alf_data/lucene-indexes.

But what I don't understand is when and how the content of the files in backup-lucene-indexes are created and updated.

And… can this backup structure be deleted to reduce the disk space requirements for an Alfresco repository, or it is used for certain tasks at runtime?

[loftux]

It is the folder you should backup for lucene index, see http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Backup_and_Restore#Backing_up_the_Filesystem
It is scheduled to be created each day at 3am.
Never hot backup lucene_index directory, it will most likely cause index corruption.

Peter Löfgren

[theorbix]

Thanks Peter.

So I assume that even if I delete this folder, it will be automatically recreated every night…. Ok.

Probably there is a way to disable this automatic backup of indexes, but I also see the potential downsides (it will save disk space, but if the main index becomes corrupt for any reason, the only workaround would be a total rebuild of the index, or the recovery from a tape backup of the main indexes…