Backup utilities

The backup and restore utilities have been updated to require a valid database password.

Note:

The nightly database backup cronjob using the [Product Directory]/tools/backup.pl script is disabled, as it would fail with the new database password that was added. The backup has to be done manually or a script needs to be created that will create the database backup using the database password provided during the installation. The rotation of these database backup files needs to be taken under consideration, since the file system space will be used up if the backups performed on daily or regular basis.

The installation process for the Network Configuration Manager Application server automatically installs the utilities required to perform a nightly backup of your network data, placing them in the [Product directory]/tools directory. These tools are:

• [Product directory]/tools/backup.pl — Creates a compressed backup bundle of all critical data files on an active server, storing the resulting backup file in [Product directory]/data-image

• [Product directory]/tools/restore.pl — Given a name of a backup bundle in [Product directory]/ data-image, restores the network image on the Network Configuration Manager Application server

• [Product directory]/ tools/rotate-backups.pl — Given an integer, such as 7, maintains a list of the seven most recent backup files in the [Product directory]/data-image directory, based on file timestamps

  These utilities provide full backup and full restoration. Since the Network Configuration Manager application is not transactional in nature, there is no provision for incremental backups or transaction rollback. This greatly simplifies the restoration process and management of backups in your environment.

  The [Product directory]/tools/restore.pl utility is run manually in the event that a full data restore of the Network Configuration Manager Application server is required. To run the command, you must log in to the Network Configuration Manager server as user ‘root’ and execute the following command:

  # [Product directory]/tools/restore.pl

  [Product directory]/data-image/<filename>

  <filename> indicates the name of the backup file to be restored from the [Product directory] /data-image directory.

  Logs are created for database related scripts to show the progress or display errors encountered. When you run any of these scripts, logs are generated in the same folder. The logs generated are archive.log, backup.log, and restore.log. These logs will help you to analyze the progress of these scripts or analyze any errors occurring while they were run.