Howto take a CONSISTENT backup of AS-Java WITHOUT shutting down?

[Former Member]

According to the official documentation one needs to shutdown the Java instance (EP, KM, BI-Java) and backup filesystem and database at the same time to ensure consistency, so far I understood.

Since there is no easy way of finding out, who's logged in at a specific moment, we have no chance to inform logged in/working users about an imminent downtime/shutdown.

Things become even worse, if backups are taken at night when different timezones are using the system productively.

What is a recommended "best practice" for those kind of setups? Is there anywhere an information on which of the running applications writes data into the filesystem so we could probably keep it in sync with the database "manually" in case we need to recover a backup, that was taken online?

Any input greatly appreciated.

--

Markus

[brad_landry2]

Hi Markus,

my strategy is to take an online (cons) backup every night and an offline backup every sunday at 00:00.

There is a way to take an online cons backup, and now is supported in 2004s (maybe too in NW04 but NOT in was 6.20).

Here are my scripts for online/offline backup.

Online :

xcopy E:\usr\sap E:\BO\j2e /Q /E /C /H /R /O /Y

xcopy E:\FSDB E:\BO\fsdb\ /Q /E /C /H /R /O /Y

brbackup -p initp1pOnline.sap -d disk -t online_cons -m all -c -u system/password -k no -e 0 -l E -a -p initp1pOnline.sap -save_delete -d disk -n 10000 -c -u system/password -k no -l E

Offline :

stopsap name=p1p nr=00 sapdiahost=sapep1p

stopsap name=p1p nr=01 sapdiahost=sapep1p

net stop SAPP1P_00

net stop SAPP1P_01

xcopy E:\usr\sap E:\bof\j2e /Q /E /C /H /R /O /Y

xcopy E:\FSDB E:\bof\fsdb /Q /E /C /H /R /O /Y

brbackup -c -u system/password

net start SAPP1P_01

net start SAPP1P_00

startsap name=p1p nr=01 sapdiahost=sapep1p

startsap name=p1p nr=00 sapdiahost=sapep1p

I tested both backups and was able to restore from scratch without problem.

Brad

[markus_doehr2]

Hi Brad,

thanx for explaining but I have doubts, that they are "consistent".

If you start copying via xcopy, how do you ensure, that a file, that's already copied is not changed until the end of the backup (to ensure consistency)?

--

Markus

[brad_landry2]

Hi Markhus,

I followed the sap instructions for backup strategy :

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/4b/d8f23ea4b42e5ae10000000a114084/content.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04s/helpdata/en/4b/d8f23ea4b42e5ae10000000a114084/content.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04s/helpdata/en/8c/44393b31ffd667e10000000a114084/frameset.htm

You should do the online backup in a hour that you know there is not a lot of modification.

DON'T only take online backups, take an offline a least a week.

You don't want to be in a situation of crashed server, and not able to restore because of a bad backup.

You may ask SAP about the consistency, or someone else can confirm it for you.

Brad