Backup of a Windows installation: Offline or Online?

[benjamina]

Hello All,

I would like to configure the backup of an otrs instance running on a Windows system (2003).

I already read the following document: How do I best back-up a windows installation of OTRS? -> http://faq.otrs.org/otrs/public.pl?Acti ... ItemID=325
My understanding is that you can use the backup.pl to backup an linux otrs installation WITHOUT any downtime of the OTRS application (no stop needed to perform the backup, so online backup..).

- Can you explain me how can i be sure that my files backup (not the sqldump part of the script) will be consistent? What happened if one of these files is in use during the "tar" backup performed by the script?

What i want to do on windows is to recreate a script to perform the same backup (mysqldump + file backup) but i would like to avoid backup problem because of files in use (files updated during the backup). In other words, i'll like to take a consistent ONLINE backup.

- I think that the backup script backup.pl is not able to handle changed files during the backup. Correct?
- i think that to be sure that changed files are handled during backup on windows, i'll have to use a VSS compliant tool like ntbackup.exe...

Thanks a lot for your help,
Benjamin

[crythias]

In general, there aren't (doesn't seem to be from a cursory inspection) that many things that will change besides the database.

What can change:

A user manually makes an admin configuration change to the system, updating ZZZAAuto.pm or someone editing Config.pm or a .dtl manually.
These aren't everyday occurrences. (OK, they may be initially, but chances are they won't likely be happening at 11:30p/3:00a. and won't change on their own.)

The System Log changes.

Attachments arrive via email and (if configured to do so) store in the file system instead of the database.

If you're paranoid, add a verbose flag to the tar and store any error messages to its own backup log, or use ntbackup for the filesystem backup.

[benjamina]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your assistance!

I'll investigate how to use the ntbackup tool to perform the files backup part.

Best Regards,
Benjamin