The OpenEdge Hive

New Backup/Archive/Restore Utilities Added to the Progress Standard Libraries Project

Quick overview -

Backup utility -

The backup utility does a full backup and then 6 incremental backups every time it runs for every database.

There's an additional script to backup after images that can be set to run every 15/30 minutes. The backup and after image backup use .lk files and will not interfere with each other.

Archive utility -

The archive utility picks up the files left by the backup utility and organizes them into neat zip files by database and date into a designated directory usually on another machine (the archive directory can also be backed up to tape).

The archive utility maintains a number of backup copies (full backup + it's incremental backups + their after images together) and deletes older backups over the specified number.

The archive utility backups are zipped and use both full, incremental and after images so it allows you to archive months of every database changes on a small amount of disk space even for very large databases.

The archive utility emails a status report and log files trails so you always know the status of your backups.

Restore utility -

The restore utility fills an important task by checking the backups. I've been selling DBA services for many years and I can't tell you how many times I've seen companies with no backups for 6 months or more because they ran out of disk space or even a block got corrupted and no one bothered to check the backups. It is recommended to restore the backup to a test environment daily that someone actually uses and tests.

If you don't check your backups you better start praying.

The restore utility can use the archive to restore backups and roll to any point in time. If no time is specified the restore utility defaults to the previous day so it can test the last day backup and all the after images collected.

Error handling -

The utilites keep .lg log files and errors are directed to the log files. Incase a utility encounters an error it will send an email after it has completed with the log file trail.

The utilities use .lk files so they wouldn't interfere with each other.

The backup utilities take special care working with databases that have after images enabled so the database would not be shutdown if it ran out of after image extents. We've been writing backup systems for years and never had a database shutdown because of it yet.

Where to get the utilities -

http://www.oehive.org/project/lib

The project is inside the slib/baksys directory. The project is made up of 4 Progress programs and their .bat (for Windows) and .sh scripts (for UNIX/Linux).

The .bat/.sh files are ready to go. All settings are done using environment variables in the .bat/.sh files.

Just like everything else we do it works on both UNIX/Linux and Windows and compatible with Progress version 9 or better.

If you have any questions or requests please feel free to contact me.

Alon Blich
Email: alonblich@gmail.com
Phone: +972-54-2188086
Skype: alon.blich