SOAPedia Home > Introduction Guides > SOAPware Installation Guides > Creating and Restoring Backups
Creating and Restoring Backups
Table of contents
- 1. Start the SOAPware Datamanager
- 2. DataManager Features
- 2.1. Backup
- 2.2. Restore
- 2.3. Maintenance
- 2.4. Options
- 3. Scheduling Backups and Maintenance
- 3.1. Create a New Scheduled Task
- 3.1.1. Run Once
- 3.1.2. Run Daily
- 3.1.3. Run Weekly
- 3.1.4. Run Monthly
- 3.2. Change Existing Schedule
- 3.3. Delete Existing Schedule
- 3.1. Create a New Scheduled Task
- 4. DataManager Log Files
The SOAPware DataManager is a database utility designed for the Postgres database. It uses existing, tried-and-true utilities provided by Postgres and Windows, but is wrapped up in a simple, easy-to-use interface.
The DataManager allows the user to create and schedule backups, schedule maintenance tasks and perform database restores. Before going live using SOAPware in a production environment, it is important to do a restore test on a different PC/server. Establish a schedule to perform regular test restores in the future and do them anytime there are changes in the system configurations.
Start the SOAPware Datamanager
To Start the SOAPware DataManager, Click Start, All Programs, SOAPware, SOAPware DataManager.
You should then see the SOAPware DataManager Login Screen.
When you start the DataManager, you must login with the database administrator password. This defaults to the postgres user account on the database. (This is the second set of passwords created during the SOAPware Data Server install).
NOTE: The database administration password is NOT the same as the SOAPware Administration password. The database administration account only accesses the Postgres database.
Only use the Advanced section if your server, port or database administration user name is different than the default install.
- Server: Host name or IP address where database is running. Defaults to localhost.
- Port: Port number where database is listening. Defaults to port 5432.
- User Name: The administration user on the database. User must have administration privileges. Defaults to postgres.
DataManager Features
The DataManager is divided up into four sections:
Backup
The backup routine creates a database script file to completely rebuild your database from scratch. It contains all the user, tablespace, table and data information needed to restore your database completely.
Backup file sizes can range from about 50MB to many Gigabytes, depending on database size and compression options.
It can take from 20 minutes to several hours for a backup to complete. Please plan to schedule backups to run nightly for the best results.
- Backup Name: Use any name which is meaningful to you for a backup name.
- Append Current Date: Will attach a date stamp of when the backup was run. If checked, new backup files will be created each day creating multiple backups. This helps ensure your data, but you must delete old backup files every so often to prevent the backups from taking all the space on your drive. If this is not checked, the backup will overwrite the last backup each time.
- Select Location: Choose the folder where you would like your backup file to be placed.
- Set Backup Schedule: This header is collapsible. Click it to view or hide scheduling options.
See the Scheduling section below for more details on setting a backup schedule. - Backup Now Button: Click this button to run a backup using the settings on this tab.
Note: A backup can be canceled. It will delete the current backup file and your database is not affected.
Restore
The DataManager can take a previously made backup file and restore the database to the exact state as when the backup is made.
Note: After the restore is completed, any user passwords or preferences changed since the backup will be reset to previous state.
- Select Backup File: Choose the backup file created by the DataManager to run a restore.
- Restore Button: Click this button to start the restore.
If restoring a compressed backup file, the DataManager needs to decompress the backup file before the restore. Therefore, it needs extra hard drive space to decompress the file. It may take as much as seven times the compressed file size needed in hard drive space. For example, a 3GB compressed backup may need an extra 20GB of hard drive space to run the recovery.
If a restore is tried and there is not enough room to decompresses the file, the recovery will fail before the database is touched. Simply make more room, or set the temporary directory in the options (see below) and run the recovery again.
The temporary, uncompressed backup file will be automatically deleted after the recovery completes.
Note: You must wait 10 minutes between creating a backup and running a restore in order to clear out the connections.
Warning: Running a restore will replace all the data and table structures of your database.
The old database will be deleted.
The process cannot be canceled.
Maintenance
Databases need to be optimized and cleaned up routinely for maximum performance. Higher traffic databases should be optimized more often, sometimes daily. Lower traffic databases may only need to be optimized once a week or month.
Optimizations may take from 30 minutes to several hours to complete.
- Run All Optimizations: Perform each optimization. (Recommended)
- Update Statistics: Resets all table statistics, row counts, etc.
- Clear Unused Space: Useful after many deletes to reclaim space left behind.
- Reset Indexes: Refreshes table indexes to help data retrieval.
- Set Maintenance Schedule: This header is collapsible. Click it to view or hide scheduling options. See the Scheduling section for more details on setting a maintenance schedule.
- Optimize Now Button: Click button to perform selected optimizations.
Note: Running optimizations may degrade database performance. We recommend setting your Maintenance schedule to run at night or weekends when database traffic is low.
Options
- Database Install Path: The DataManager uses Postgres utilities for backup and restore. This path should not be changed unless the Postgres install path is different than listed.
- Compress Backup: This option compresses the backup file as it is being written. Use this option to keep file sizes at a minimum.
- Restore Temporary File Directory: If a backup file was compressed by the DataManager, a temporary, uncompressed file will be made by the DataManager before the restore. By default, the temporary file is created in the same directory as the backup file. Since this temporary file can be quite large, you can choose to have this temporary file created on another drive. Deselect the option to choose where you would like the temporary file to go.
- Data Manager Password: Use this to change the database administration password.
Note: The database administration password is NOT the same as the SOAPware Administration password. The database administration account only accesses the Postgres database.
Scheduling Backups and Maintenance
The DataManager provides an easy-to-use interface to create a Windows Task scheduled event to run your backup and maintenance routines. Simply setup a backup or maintenance task as outlined above, then choose the schedule frequency. When you save the schedule, your task will run at that time.
For advanced users, you can maintain existing tasks using the Windows Task scheduler. For more information, start here at the Microsoft Task Knowledge Base.
Create a New Scheduled Task
After you set your backup or maintenance information, expand the schedule tab by clicking on the down arrow icon.
Under the Run dropdown, you can choose the schedule type from Once, Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Different options will appear depending on what type of schedule you will choose.
Set the Time you wish your task to run. We recommend running your task at a time when there is little or no database activity.
Name your schedule so it will be unique in the Windows Task list. If you already have a task with the same name, it will ask if you would like to overwrite the existing task.
Run Once
This option will run your task only once on the specified day and time.
Run Daily
This option will run your task daily. You can choose to skip a number of days.
Run Weekly
Running a task weekly allows you to choose which days of the week to run. You may also skip weeks.
Run Monthly
A Monthly task allows you to set the task to run once a month on a certain day. You may check the months you would like to run the task.
Change Existing Schedule
To change an existing schedule, simply setup a new schedule how you would like with any new backup or maintenance or schedule data and give the same schedule Name as an existing task. This will overwrite the existing task with your new information.
To find a list of your existing schedules, look in the Windows Task Scheduler for your tasks. Go to the Windows Start menu, then open the Control Panel. Open Scheduled Tasks and it will list all your current tasks. You may edit these directly to change the schedule, but to change the backup or maintenance parameters, you must use the DataManager and overwrite one of the tasks.
Delete Existing Schedule
To delete an existing schedule, open the Scheduled Tasks control panel as mentioned above. Right click on the task and choose Delete.
DataManager Log Files
Log files can give you details on how your tasks are running. They provide information about what tables were used and any warnings or errors which may have occurred. Each time the DataManager is used, either in the GUI or in a scheduled task, it will create a log file of the events.
Find the logs where your DataManager is installed at %DataManager Install Path%\Logs
The Logs directory will only keep the last 10 log files so there is no need to clean out this directory or to worry about it filling up. If you plan to keep a log file for support or other needs, be sure to move it out of this directory, or it could be deleted as more log files are created.
