We STRONGLY recommended that you back up your copy of Data Manager on a regular basis in the event that your files become lost, damaged/corrupted or inadvertently deleted. If you do NOT backup your copy of Data Manager and your computer is lost/stolen or you delete data or Data Manager becomes corrupted you will lose ALL DATA and have no means of recovering from a disaster. Unfortunately people generally only appreciate the importance of a solid data backup system until they have experienced the pain of losing all their data.
If you are too busy to backup Data Manager ask yourself these questions:
What will I do tomorrow if I come in and my Computer or the Server is dead and unrecoverable?
What will I do tomorrow if I come in and the air conditioning system flooded the office and all the computers on the ground were under water?
What will I do tomorrow if someone stole all our computers overnight?
What will I do tomorrow if our office burns down and all our computers AND backups were destroyed?
What will I do tomorrow if our server dies overnight and I find all the backup tapes were empty (someone was simply swapping tapes each day but there was no check to make sure it was actually backing up the critical data)?
These are real examples of situations that Databuzz clients have found themselves in - hopefully we have your attention about the importance of a good backup system. In the IT business there is a saying: "Its not if it will fail...It is when...And will YOU be ready."
Databuzz will be unable to assist you if you have experienced data loss and do NOT have any backups in place that we can use.
Backups cost time, money and effort to implement, and they are of no value right up until the time you need them. This means they tend to be given a low priority, but ultimately they may easily represent the difference between your business surviving and failing. Please speak with your IT consultant to ensure you have an appropriate backup procedure in place that conforms to the following minimum requirements:
Regular - at least once daily. More frequently if there is a lot of data changing
Automatic human intervention should not be necessary for the backup to take place
Incremental - meaning that you can retrieve data as it was a given number of days or months ago rather than having to replace everything at once
Redundant - at least two physically separate copies of the data to guard against one copy failing or being corrupted. Having only one backup option exposes you to more risk than having multiple backups stored in separate locations
Offsite - to help mitigate fire and theft risks (don't keep the data and backups together!)
Monitored it is vital to know if there has been any problem with the backup process. Did it actually backup what you thought it was backing up?
Tested - can data be restored from the backup? Don't wait until disaster strikes to find out that you cannot use the backup to recover.
The backup process for Data Manager depends on your version.
There is a Backup button on the Home Screen of Data Manager and each time you close the program you are prompted to save to a backup. You can perform your own backups at any time by clicking the Backup button which will create a copy of all the Data Manager databases and the Data Manager Letters folder and then save those as a compressed .zip archive it will prompt you to select a destination to save the .zip file to. The .zip file will automatically be named based on the date and time you performed the backup as follows:
DM Backup YYYDDMM HHMMSS.zip
For example a .zip file with the file name:
DM Backup 20080620 092030.zip
refers to a backup created on the 20th June, 2008 at 9:20:30 am.
When saving the .zip file we recommend saving this to your desktop or Documents folder. You should then also make a copy of this on another medium that is kept in a different location to your computer (e.g. CD, DVD, tape drive, memory stick). Its important that your copy of Data Manager and your backups are not kept in the same location in case your computer is stolen or fails in any way, meaning you cannot access either Data Manager or your backups.
Data Manager Office - Multi User backups are performed on the FileMaker Server computer (you cannot click the Backup button on the Home Screen).
When Data Manager Office is installed we will help you create daily backup scripts for FileMaker Server so that it is making at least one backup each day. Typically we setup separate folders for each daily backup (or hourly depending on your requirements).
For each Data Manager Office - Multi User installation there are 2 important folders on the Server:
Data Manager Databases - this folder stores the live databases that are being hosted by FileMaker Server and accessed via FileMaker Pro clients on the workstation computers. This folder should NEVER NEVER EVER BE touched by your tape backup/offsite backup program as they are open and running 24 hours a day and will be corrupted if they are backed up, scanned for viruses or indexed etc whilst the FileMaker Server service is running. Make sure you exclude this folder from any backup software jobs you may be running on the network (i.e. Backup Exec, Veritas, Retrospect etc). Talk with your IT consultant to ensure this folder is left alone and is never touched.
Data Manager Backups - this folder stores the backup copies of Data Manager that FileMaker Server creates through its backup schedules (these could be hourly, daily, twice daily etc depending on your requirements). This folder should be included in any backup/offsite backup systems you have in place.
The location of the Data Manager Databases and Data Manager Backups folders will depend on the configuration of your server and what drives are installed. We will inform you at the time of installation of the location of your backups folder and how to use the FileMaker Server Admin Console to ensure backups are running (make sure you also check the contents of the backup folder periodically to ensure they are being updated with new backup copies of Data Manager by checking that the modified date is correct).
FileMaker Server can only backup the FileMaker databases that it is hosting - any other documents such as the Data Manager Letters folder will need to be included in your normal backup system.
You can read the FileMaker Server 9 Getting Started Guide online at the FileMaker website.