Automate creation of backup schedules?

January 27, 201015 yr

I have an issue that I can't really find any solution for anywhere, but then I havn't turned to the best of resources until now :

I'm doing a lot of FMS installs (FMS9 for now, but soon only FMS10), and after installation I create a bunch of backup schedules. One for every weekday (weekly) and one for every working hour of the day (daily). The backups are allways put in the same directory.

Is there any way to automate the creation of these schedules so that I don't have to create them manually?

It's not so much work when you set up one FMS, but when youv'e set up a hundred...

January 27, 201015 yr

I haven't tried it but perhaps you can copy the registry files.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREFileMakerFileMaker Server10.0Schedules

January 28, 201015 yr

Like John indicated: as long as the paths are the same you can export the relevant section of the registry and import it elsewhere.

Or you can VBscript the creation of a Registry script with the proper info

Or check my website (downloads section on www.connectingdata.com) for another backup approach that does not require a ton of schedules

February 2, 201015 yr

Author

Thanks alot for your answers!

The VB-script looks very interesting, it would really be an advantage to be able to zip the backups aswell! But if I understand it right this script will never overwrite any previous backups and therby little by little eat the server disk space (my files tend to be quite large..).

I'm not that familiar with VB-script, but I guess it wouldn't be that complicated to rewrite the script to overwrite the zip-files like one week old.

Also, as I dug deeper into the UserGuide, I realized that in FMS 10 it is possible to create one backup schedule that repeats everyday, creates time stamped zip files that is overwritten for example once a week!

/Johan

February 3, 201015 yr

Yes, FM10 can keep x old backups, but it doesn't zip them.

Also, the approach outlined in the white paper tells you how to run a cleanup routine. I have mine set to delete backups older than 3 days on the FMS hard disk. The routine also copies the zipped backups to a network share with more disk space so I can keep at least a week's worth of backups there.