How often do you use your RE Backup?

Alex Hall · October 2015

Our team/school has gone through some staffing changes and as the new DBA I don't have access to the Management Console. The technology office is pushing back a little on granting access, while at the same time, they are not completing weekly/monthly maintenance tasks.

We have two different mindsets.

Mine: We have a backup. It's a shame that we occasionally need it, but it's there for a reason.

Their's: We should avoid all activities that may potentially warrant a backup.

Such activities like re-indexing are backup potential, and therefore they are shying away.

I'm new to Raiser's Edge, so I'm curious, how often do your organizations use your backup? My last database had multiple levels of environments to process all change management. Raiser's Edge just has the Live database. For this reason I feel the answer can't be zero, but how high is too high? What number of backups per year is reasonable?

Nicole S · October 2015

I have only had to revert to back up once. And that was more than I ever want to. At the time, they were backing up twice a week, so we were out 4 days of data entry. After that, EVERY SINGE DAY.

Regardless of how often you actually need your backup, your database needs to be backed up EVERY SINGLE DAY. In the event that you have to go to the backup, you are going to be in a world of hurt if your back up is even a couple of days old. Everything that anyone has entered will have to be redone. It's a mess. EVERY SINGLE DAY. And if possible, before any major global changes, just in case you make a mistake it's better to be able to go back 10 minutes than 24 hours.

And I'd keep a history of back ups too. And note the dates of any major changes to the database, just in case. We've never had to, but it has certainly come up in discussion that we might want to go back a week or something like that. (Long story, had a nightmare temp and she made a HUGE mess.)

John Heizer · October 2015

All our SQL databases are backed up automatically every night by our IT department. While BB recommends using the BMC for backups, third-party SQL-specific backup utilities work just fine.

I don't have access to the BMC. It would best if I were easily able to create backups before any big import/global change, but I just triple-check before any such action. I figure if IT wants the headache and responsibility of ensuring good backups (and blame if they fail), I'm happy to unload that burden onto them.

JoAnn Strommen · October 2015

Ditto on every night. When I been doing some major, major work in db, I have asked CFO to run a backup backup.

The other part of the equation is to test on a regular schedule to be sure the back up is valid. I have it on my task schedule and I remind IT that it needs to be done. And I keep reminding them until I hear that it has been done. I can't stress this one enough. We had a new IT person several years ago who made changes on server and we found out almost 3 months later that the backup was not backing up the active RE but another copy he installed on server. We had to re-create every gift and change to RE we knew of. Major mess.

Joost Groen · October 2015

Same here: a backup of the SQL database is created every night.

We never had to use it though

But it's a safe thought that there is a daily backup, because sometimes I am deleting or changing information on 50,000+ records (using for instance Alternate Address Deleter or something similar) and then it's nice to know that if I do something wrong, I can revert to a backup to reverse the changes I did to the database.

Vanessa Taylor · October 2015

IT backs up our database hourly (we are a healthcare system, so IT is vigilant about server back-ups). In the 5 years I've been here, I think we've restored to backup 3 times. Having to go back no more than an hour is awesome (except for when people don't contact me right away about needing to restore to backup...then it makes no difference!). Two of the restorations were just for small things - I think a gift record was deleted and a constituent merge was done improperly - so it's nice to have the ability to restore even if you aren't changing thousands of records at once. Only a few constituent records were affected, but it would have been difficult or impossible to recreate them from memory and other documentation.

Gracie Schild · October 2015

I'm with everyone else on this. Our IT department does a back up every night and keeps them for a week. In 2013 a lightning strike and flood combo knocked out our entire server system. We had no computers at all for a couple days and no RE for almost a month. Thank goodness it was all intact when we got it back. In case something catastrophic happens, you should also email yourself any major mailing lists - we had to recreate our gala invitation mailing list (due to go out in the week after the storm) from the YEA list that we found in an archived email to the mailing house! We didn't use DropBox then, but we do now. No matter what happens to your computer or your servers, you can still move forward with some projects through the cloud. Back up EVERYTHING you may need in the future!

Gracie

Laura Caswell · October 2015

In 16 years I've only had to go to a back up once. Not something I ever want to do again.

Backups are run nightly through the BMC. We also run the Check Integrity, Update Statistics & Rebuild Indexes processes every night. We store a copy of the backup on the RE server and then our overnight backup processes back that folder up. We keep 2 nights of backups on the server. Backups of the backups are kept longer but I don't even want to think about going further back than 2 days.

No one in the Advancement office has access to the BMC. I work in IT and I'm the one who set the schedule for the backups and maintenance. There is someone else in IT who checks each morning that these processes have run. If they don't run (that's happened about 5 times in 16 years), she lets me know and I look into the "what happened?!" Disk space is usually the issue.

If someone in Advancement is doing a large import or changing lots of records, especially if it's the first time for this type of update, they contact me and I will run a backup on the fly. Typically I get notified in advance and we schedule it between ourselves. This does not change the regularly scheduled backup.

It's so simple to set the schedule in the BMC. I can't imagine why your IT staff wouldn't run it nightly.And as I said, my server guys have set up the nightly backup of all servers to include the one folder on the RE server to include in their process. They may actually include the SQL database as well. I'm not sure (and I should check).

Just one more opinion on the topic.

laura

Laura Caswell

Info Tech

Worcester State University

lcaswell@worcester.edu

John Heizer · October 2015

JoAnn Strommen:

Ditto on every night. When I been doing some major, major work in db, I have asked CFO to run a backup backup.

The other part of the equation is to test on a regular schedule to be sure the back up is valid. I have it on my task schedule and I remind IT that it needs to be done. And I keep reminding them until I hear that it has been done. I can't stress this one enough. We had a new IT person several years ago who made changes on server and we found out almost 3 months later that the backup was not backing up the active RE but another copy he installed on server. We had to re-create every gift and change to RE we knew of. Major mess.

YIKES!!!!

Debra Holcomb · October 2015

I've had to use the real back up only once and that was due to some sort of connectivity glitch that occured while a batch was being created. When I did need to revert to the back up, it was relatively easy, and it was good to know it could be done without much trouble.

I also use our test database as a low-level back up so that we can look up historical info that might have changed since I last updated the data (I refresh the test database every 6 months or so). This has been helpful when we've accidentally deleted something (like an email) that would take a bit more effort to recover otherwise.

I need to use the management console more often than either of our back ups to kick people out of the sytem who have forgetten to log out so I can do work that requires everyone to be out of the system.

Robert Flynn · October 2015

We backup the RE database every 12 hours and run the system maintenance nightly. We backup the server upon which RE runs every night. The database files reside on a RAID 5 array (three or more drives) so a single drive failure wil not cause a work stoppage. The backup files are copied to a separate network drive for redundancy. The backups are then moved offsite. We keep the backup files on the server for 10 days, externally fof 60 days and offsite for 6 months.

The real question is: How much work (transactions) are you willing to loose? A whole day worth of work? A few hours? This would depend upon your workload and the number of transactions (entries) your enter into RE.

We backup our website databases every 15 minutes (as an example).

We've been using RE since its flagship windows product (I think it was 6.1). I promise you that backups have been our salvation many times because of hardware failures, Microsoft updates, and a whole host of factors external to Raiser's Edge.

Manual updates should be performed ALWAYS before any RE upgrade (like the 7.95 version to be released late November).

SQL databases like constant maintenance! Failure to do so regularly will cause your performance to become slower that drool.

Alex Hall · October 2015

Thank you everyone for the very detailed responses. We do backup our system nightly and there's repetitiveness in the number of backup copies and checks to make sure it's run.

While I understand it's best practice to always have the backup and check on it, it sounds like the backups are used VERY infrequently. For the most part Raiser's Edge does not fail on it's own, and if we can reduce catastrophic user error, we shouldn't need it. This is good information to know heading into my meeting with the Tech office.

Rachel Slager 2 · December 2015

Although I always let IT handle the backup, done nightly, there is a strong case for one user to have access to the management console.

There are some plugins I use which only work if everyone is out of the database. Even though I inform users of a cleanup project where they will need to be out of the system, and even though I do the work after hours and send reminders, it never fails that someone stays logged in. So I use the Managment Console to see who those active users are; I call them, and if they're unreachable I can boot them out of the system and get on with my work.

As for frequency of using backup, I've used it twice. Once when a coworker imported using IDs with leading zeroes but accidentally dropped the leading zeroes and overwrote a bunch of records. Once when I tested a new plugin and deleted more than half of the phone numbers in the system! In both cases, we had luckily requested that IT do a backup before we got started, so when we reverted we didn't lose any newly entered info.

Nancy Williford · February 2016

We also back up our database nightly, but have never tested the backup. Ever. It is something that we need to do but it has always seemed a little scary. Can anyone provide a knowledgebase that explains to process? I found one - KB75060 - but although it is the link to a KB for how to test the backup, it only addresses restoring the backup. Thanks.

Elizabeth Johnson · February 2016

Nancy, I have an install on a separate workstation that I use as a stand alone. I use this to test backups, test major changes prior to performing them in the live database, or for demonstration/training purposes of proposed changes to our table structure and things that I can demonstrate with our data vs. the sample database.

We back up nightly, and I have access to BMC both on the stand alone and remote access for the live database. I have access to the backup folder for Raiser's Edge and Education Edge and we keep 5 nights of backups and I copy and save the ones I deem critical (pre updates, major changes, fiscal year end, etc.) to a new location. We are integrated with EE and I do not have access to stop syncronization, so I don't do backups during the day. I come into the office an hour before everyone else and use that time to do major changes that might warrent restoration of the previous night's backup. I have been here for 11 years and have only needed to restore from a backup one time, in year one. We run the four maintenance tasks weekly on schedule - every Wednesdays prior to the backup.

Weekly, I verify the backups are happening for both RE and EE and that synchroization is happening on the 15 minute schedule and check the integration reports for issues that have not remedied themselves. Monthly, I test that the backups are functional.

Hope this helps,

Elizabeth

Nancy Williford · February 2016

Thanks for the information. I've heard it helps to test the backup on a standalone workstation. We do have one we could use but I'm not clear on how to get the backup from BMC on the server to the standalone workstation. I have this scheduled for next week with our IT person. I'm sure he will be able to understand the process more than I am.

Thanks-

How often do you use your RE Backup?

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