In this video,
you're going to learn how to perform a baseline backup of our PI
Data Archive. A baseline backup is a
full backup that we must perform before we
configure our scheduled backup tasks. Or if we are changing the
backup directory of our automated backups. As
denoted by its name, a baseline backup is a
starting point for all future automated backups to build upon.
By configuring scheduled backups of our PI Data
Archive, you'll be able to keep your data
safe without any effort on your part.
Please note that you do not need to perform a baseline backup for new
installations. In a new installation, all files will be
included in the first automated backup,
as none of the files will have been previously been marked as being
backed up. Thus if you have a new installation, you can proceed
directly to setting up the automated backup task in the next video.
On the other hand, if you have an
existing PI Data Archive and they
have previously taken independent backups, you'll need to perform
the baseline backup before setting up your automated backups.
For instance, in my system here, you can see that I have
previously backed up my archive files. Therefore
I need to perform a baseline backup
before I configure my automated backup task. This is to
ensure that any files that have already been marked
as backed up will still be copied to the directory for automated
backups in the next video.
Before I can perform a baseline backup, there are two pre-requisite
tasks that I must perform.
First I need to select a location to store my backups.
Second, I need to ensure that I have enough disk
space at that location to hold a full backup of my PI
Data Archive.
With regards to my backup directory, I have already created
a directory for my automated backups on a
dedicated physical drive
called Automated.
I've selected a dedicated
drive to both safe guard my data against disk failure as well
as improved performance.
If my backup files are located on the same drive as my
PI Data Archive or the disk which holds my archive
files, then there is no benefit in the event of hardware
failure on those drives as I'll also lose my
backup. Secondly, backup operations
require a lot of disk activity to copy files. Things like
CPU and file system cache resource usage is
inevitable during the backup operation. However, using a
separate drive ensures that the impact on the physical
disk performance of my PI Data Archive is minimized.
Once I have selected a directory for my
backups, I also have to make sure that I have enough disk space on this
drive to hold a full backup of my PI Data
Archive as well as my future automated backups.
Of all of the components included in your PI
Data Archive backup, your archive files are the
largest. Therefore, to roughly estimate the disk space that
I'll need for my backup, I'll go and look at how many
non empty archives I have registered on my PI Data
Archive. In this case, you can see that I have
three archives that have data.
And they are each 512 MB.
Therefore I will need roughly
1500 MB to hold just backups of my archive
files and we'll need additional space for the other
configuration information.
If I check my
G drive which holds my backup
directory, I can see that I
have plenty of space for my PI Data Archive
backup. However,
this is something to keep in mind when selecting a
location for your PI Data Archive backups.
Now that we've selected
a location and verified that we have enough
disk space ,we are ready to perform our baseline backup
for our PI Data Archive. While
on my PI Data Archive machine, I'm going to open up an administrative
command prompt.
And navigate
to my PI Data Archive installation directory.
I can use the environment variable
%PI Server% to take me to this installation directory.
Once here, I'm going to navigate
to the ADM subfolder.
In order to perform my baseline backup,
I'm going to use the command piartool -backup
and then here I will specify the
location that I've selected for my PI Data Archive baseline
backup. And again, this is the same directory
for the automated backups that we perform in the next video.
Therefore I will use my G
drive, PI Backups,
Automated.
Finally, I'll specify that
I want a type full backup. This is
again, because a baseline backup should include all of our registered non empty archives, and all
configuration
information. Therefore, our future automated backups can only
include files that have changed since the previous
backup, instead of all of our files again.
Finally, I will
specify -arcdir
and this will create a folder within my backup
directory called Arc which will hold all of my archive
files for the backup. Once I'm
ready, I can hit enter. And I can see
that my full backup was successfully started.
In order to check the status of my
backup, I'm going to open up another administrative command
prompt and run a command through the
Adm subfolder as well. So
piartool -backup -query
This is where I can check the
status of my backups. So for instance now I
can see that I have a backup that is currently in
progress as denoted by the value of true.
Additionally, I can see information such as the type of
backup which in our case is a
full backup. As well as the time it was
started.
Now that some time has passed, if
I run this command again,
I can see that my backup is completed as denoted
by my backup in progress set to false.
Again, I can see that it was a full backup and
that it completed successfully.
Now that the backup is completed,
let's take a look at our backup directory which
again in my case is G, PI Backups,
Automated. Since this is a full backup, I can
see that not only all of my configuration information is
copied but also all of my registered non empty
archives and their associated annotation files.
So in this case, I have three archive
files.
There are several other types of backups that you can perform. For
instance, if you do not want to include all of your archive files in your backup, there are other types
you can specify. For more information,
please see the PI Data Archive System Management Guide
for more information on backups.
Now that we've successfully performed our baseline backup, we
are ready to setup our automated backup task in the next video.