Moving Relational DataStore Backup Files Between Backup Locations

[mattkramer]

Hello,

I am currently working in enterprise 11.3 on prem and am trying to set up a routine to handle backups for our relational datastore. The main hurdle I am running into is that I am trying to push these backup files to a NAS that is offsite. When running the backupdatastore.bat to this offsite NAS, the routine takes about a week to run. My idea is to write the daily backup file to a more local backup location (with a faster write time), and then transfer the backup file over to the NAS, which will also be set up as a backup location. 

Is there any issue with moving these backup files between locations like this? Just mirroring the folder to the NAS will not work due to storage constraints of the local backup location, so at any given time I only want to have at most 1 backup file in the local backup location.

[RyanUthoff]

I don't think there is anything wrong with that. As long as you maintain the integrity of the backup files themselves, you can move them wherever you want and restore from them without an issue.

You can specify the number of days to retain the backup files using the updatebackupretaindays.bat command. However, if you have slow transfer speeds to your NAS, the biggest concern I see is that you need to make sure you have enough time for your data store backups to transfer before the next backup cycle starts and deletes the old backup. Otherwise, you might get into a situation where the data store deletes the old backup while it is still transferring to the NAS.

[mattkramer]

Thank you for the response! When you mention the integrity of the backup files, do you mean to not edit the .dump file in the folder named for each backup? I was planning on moving this folder and its associated .dump file between the locations. I wasn't sure if there was any indexing or mentions to these files within the .data_store folders, or the walarchive folder that I needed to consider.

[RyanUthoff · Accepted solution]

By integrity, I just meant that the full backup file gets copied over successfully and doesn't get partially transferred because it got interrupted or something like that. But yeah, moving the entire folder containing the .dump file should contain everything you need in order to restore from a backup.

The walarchive does bring up a good point though. The walarchive doesn't really matter UNLESS you're taking incremental backups (point in time recovery) of the data store. But as long as you're only doing complete backups of the data store, then that folder shouldn't matter and all you'll need is the .dump file.

[mattkramer]

That sounds good, thank you for the help!!