Properly Testing Backup files

[ryyno10]

Could anyone shed some light upon how to properly test backup files?  Today, one of our files crashed during production hours and I restored it with a backup file, however, I'm unsure whether my backup will eventually face the same fate.  The consistency check cleared my backup but I'm not sure if that should put my mind at ease.

 

I am currently running the most recent version of FMS 11.  Thanks in advance!!

[brian rich]

We run backups from our FMP11 Server every night.  We were also concerned about how 'good' the backups were so thought it worthwhile checking the results each time the backup runs.

 

To check the backups, we set up a 'robot' Filemaker machine which supports a special database writted for this purpose.

Each night, we produce a second set of backup files which are empty clones on the databases (we were just looking for corruption in the file structure rather than the data, but there is no reason - except elapsed time - why you shouldn't check the full data file if you wish) .  The robot copies these clones to it's own local storage.  The robot program has a single table which holds one record for each database in the backup.  For each record, it will run a 'recover' on the named database, which produces a recovery log file.  It then pulls this log file into a text field and parses the log data searching for errors.  It records basic details of any errors found, assigns a 'status' value based on the severity of the errors found, and when all files have been processed, emails the admin with the results.

 

This has run for over two years now, and on a few occasions has reported a problem.  This has allowed us to go back to the last but one back-up to recover a fully working version. By no means a perfect solution, but it does give us an indication of any problem in the integrity of the backups so we can immediately take action. No substitute I suppose for complete testing, but in our legacy system which runs 95 separate databases, (one is 35Gb in size), full testing of the backups every time would simply not be feasible,

 

HTH

 

Brian

[Wim Decorte]

 Today, one of our files crashed during production hours 

 

 

I would dedicate time to go through the logs and find out why it crashed.  That may help prevent damage to the files.