Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 Backups

In my System and Business Administration Overview blog several weeks back, I gave an overview of what it means to backup your production Pro/INTRALINK instance. I just wanted to spend some additional time here talking about some of the nuances of backing up Pro/INTRALINK 8.0

As I've mentioned before, backing up the system is possibly one of the most critical System Administration tasks you can perform. Hardware or software issues could corrupt your database, your vault(s) or your LDAP directory to the point where Pro/INTRALINK would become unusable. Not only would your entire user-base of engineers be left without access to many of their critical day-to-day files, but your company's lifeblood, its intellectual property, in the form of engineering designs and supporting documents, could be lost. This is obviously not something you would want to explain to your boss, so follow these guidelines when architecting a backup strategy for Pro/INTRALINK.

BACKUP EARLY AND OFTEN As an administrator, you're obviously aware of the need to backup. Most customers are happy with daily backups of some form, either complete or incremental throughout the week with complete backups on the weekend. As a system administrator, you should already have a system in place for backing up the operating system and any other third-party applications running on the server, so I won't delve into those here. In any case, it's vitally important to also backup the primary Pro/INTRALINK data stores. These include:

Oracle - Datafiles, Control file, Archive logs, and database initialization file
External File Vaults - Master vaults required, replicated vaults optional
Content Cache vaults - Can find location through the Pro/INTRALINK External Storage Administrator window LDAP Information - This is best backed up through the copying of an LDAP export file to ensure that any cached modifications are stored.

COLD VS. HOT BACKUPS
For customers that can afford to shut down their Pro/INTRALINK system at night, cold backups of the system are the most straightforward. This simply involves shutting down the server and copying the aforementioned primary data stores to your backup media.

However, many customers require that their Pro/INTRALINK system support a 24x7 design environment. For these customers, offline backup of their system that may take hours and may simply not be feasible. Unfortunately, the use of external file vaults makes the hot backup of the system somewhat trickier than a simple hot Oracle backup. In this case, you will first want to stop the queues and content cache vault using the following command within the Windchill Shell: java ext.ic.components.backup.BackupManager stop

You will then want to use Oracle's Enterprise Manager (or something similar) to backup the database. Note that it is possible to just backup the redo log files as an incremental backup, but ensure that you have the appropriate versions of the datafiles backed up. Then, you can proceed to copying the other data stores as mentioned above.

Note that the queues and content cache vault will need to be re-enabled as soon as the backup is complete using the command:
java ext.ic.components.backup.BackupManager start

TEST YOUR RECOVERY STRATEGY
All of this talk about backing up the system is for naught if you're unsure how to recover the data, and when your users are breathing down your neck it's not the best time to learn. Start out by implementing your backup strategy on a test or development server and try to recreate the system using only the backed up data. As you regularly backup your production server, you should also periodically (quarterly) run through a recovery scenario to ensure that all primary data stores are accounted for and that your backup media is as reliable as intended. Just remember to adjust what you're backing up as you add table spaces and vaults to your system. And test, test, test.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
The critical nature of your company's intellectual property can't be overstated. Some other considerations should be to ensure that your Oracle table spaces are stored on a RAID 0+1 configuration for performance and stability. Also, you will want to make sure that both your control files and Archive logs are mirrored to a separate physical disk as an added measure of redundancy.

I hope this clears up some of the questions that you've had pertaining to backing up the Pro/INTRALINK system. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in our forums.

Here's to hoping that you never need to employ your recovery strategy.