Back up Solr6 Indexes on Alfresco community 6.2.0 from Docker

[Rituels]

Hi everyone,

Currently running Alfresco Community Edition 6.2.0 on linux 18.04, installed via docker from the official template on the website.

The service is doing fine and working great. However i would like to try a backup and restore in case of disaster, but i can't make it work.

Here is what i did :

I used a bind mount to put the alfresco repository in, automaticly mounted via the docker-compose.yml (alf_data)

--> This seems to work well, no error in indexing or anything. The data are sync on my VM with the container. The original installation has no error.

BACKUP : I did a dumb of my postgresql DB using

docker exec -i containerid pg_dump -c --username alfresco alfresco > /root/backupbackup/dbdumb.sql

Then, i copied the alf_data file of the binded mount to my VM

cp -r /root/mountedbind/alf_data /root/backupbackup/alf_data

RESTORE :

I then deleted the container, reinstalled alfresco via the same docker-compose.yml. Worked fine so far, again.

Then i imported the alf_data backup and the postgresql backup with

docker exec -i containerid pg_restore --username alfresco alfresco < /root/backupbackup/dbdumb.sql
sudo rsync /backupbackup/alf_data /mountedbind/alf_data

Result : I can't find any of the file (testing images put into the server) that i had before. I actualy can't put any more file inside the alfresco share.  --> Feels like i did something wrong

Though: I know i'm supposed to backup Solr6 Indexes, but as i'm on the community edition, i don't have the Share Admin console to execute the Solr6 Backup. I tried putting these settings in alfresco-global.properties but i only have errors according to the path.

solr.backup.alfresco.remoteBackupLocation=${dir.root}/solrBackup/alfresco
solr.backup.archive.remoteBackupLocation=${dir.root}/solrBackup/archive

I can't find any other documentation to help me backing up the Solr6 Indexes on alfresco.

Questions :However, just backing up the alf_data and the DB i should be able to retrieve my files, no ?

If no, how to backup Solr6 Indexes, and am i doing the others backup fine ?

Thanks you for your time,
Simon.

[heiko_robert]

Hi @Rituels ,

If you made your backup online you need to restore the lucene/solr-index from

solr.{backup,archive}.alfresco.remoteBackupLocation

by just replacing the right (sub)folder from your solr index location

It may be more convenient to use the solr backup/restore api directly since the alfresco solr-backup is just a more or less dump wrapper to call the backup REST api https://lucene.apache.org/solr/guide/6_6/making-and-restoring-backups.html To be able to access that REST API you may need to create/import the repos client certificate for authentication.

We don't rely on alfresco's solr-backup and prefer the solr-api directly to be integrated in our whole backup/restore/monitoring workflow.