Server Backup Time - Web Interruption?

[trevorg]

I am in the very early stages of planning a web enablement project and one of the concerns is this: What happens to the web clients when the FileMaker Server pauses to run it's backup script? Currently the sum of our FileMaker Databases is about 1.2 gigabytes. This takes about 15 minutes to copy over the network.

We know internally when this is about to happen because of the FileMaker Server message stating that a scheduled backup is about to occur, but what happens to the web browser clients?

How has anyone else managed this?

[LiveOak]

FM Unlimited is just another server "client" and will be paused along with everybody else. Since you know what time the backup will occur, it should be possible to use some method to default and notify web clients. If your backup runs at the same time every day, your regular web users will become familiar with this pattern, especially if you schedule it "one the hour" during off hours.

-bd

[trevorg]

Is there any other solution if that is not acceptable? In the case where time is money, and if people can't access the site, sales will be lost?

[Anatoli]

Our server is backing up 500MB of data only in 1 minute or less on local RAID. Then that can be copied somewhere else.

[scratchmalogicalwax]

spread your databases amoungst multiple folders - in your schedule instead of all databases choose the folder name from the drop down - do a schedule for each folder and you stagger the backups.

Can you run the backup at night or early in the morning ... our logs show that between 5am to 8:30am our traffic is very low - we do not get much international traffic, c.10 a day at peak and mainly europe so only 1/2 hours out.

We perform a backup early in the morning and at end of office hours about 5:30pm.

If it takes 15 mins for you to backup 1.5gig you may need to look at why your system performance is so poor aswell. Our "biggest" LAN DB server backs up 790Meg in c.1 minute.

NB lose the backup warning for the web client.

[LiveOak]

The biggest single speed item is backup across a network. Networks are 30 to 100 times slower than backup to a local hard drive The local backup can then be copied to a network server using backup software with network capability. As I think was mentioned earlier, DON'T attempt to copy the original database files while they are in use by FM Server, this is a formula for disaster.

-bd

[trevorg]

Formula for disaster is right. When I arrived on this project this is exactly what they were doing. (Backup Exec trying to Backup the live databases without a pause). As a result the system crashed nearly every night! That was the first thing that was fixed. Talk about instant hero status!

Currently the Backup script in place first pauses the databases, and then copies them over the network to another server where those files are backed up nightly. This has been working fine since there is no web access, and it runs at a time when no one is here.

When the web access becomes live we will change to a pause, then copy locally on that server (To a second local scsi raid 5 array). Then most likely have a WinAT script to copy those file to the other server for the tape backup to take place.