We have been working with a product called “Automate” and are having terrible luck with it doing a scripted automation of our database backup (version 2.60.b using the stock database -not SQL- on a Win 2000 server).This product was recomended by our developer and they have been absolutly no help in this area at all. We are in the staging phase of implementation and we can only get this to work like 60 percent of the time. My Question is what are some of the procedures and products you are using to automate the back up process. Is there a Plugin that automates this , or can anyone recomend Edited by - rogden on 2001 May 24 20:58:43
For backup we using another PC & copying fbd to this PC HDD’s over network. This is enought fast (16Gb - 1.5 h, versus nf backup takes more than 6h). On this PC is running Windows sheduler & it starts BAT every night. BAT stops NF server, errases old copy, makes new copy of fdb files, starts server, runs fin.exe for restore free blocks in fdb, closing fin.exe. In addition on this PC are tape device for making copies weekly. Thats all automation. At night works only couple ussers, but they make only inventory operations, so they don’t have a big cache in fdb & this area jumped very quickly. Probability to get non working copy is very low. We using this about 0.5 year, I havn’t seen non-working copy.
Very Inovative idea Dalius , but just for information purposes anyone else got any ideas? Just trying to get as many methods as possible.
ExpandIT have a backup tool that is excellent. check it out on www.expandit.com Lars Strøm Valsted Head of Project and Analysis Columbus IT Partner A/S www.columbusitpartner.com
Lars that product is the answer i have been looking for, Thanks!!!
Late reply but …: I’m using MacroScheduler from MJT Net (www.mjtnet.com) which starts navision, logs on to navision, starts the backup, zips the FBK to a NetwareServer from which the ZIP is backed up to tape later. Works fine! Peter
We use Macro Express 2000 It is a shareware program costs about $30. Easy to use Macro program that with scheduler
Attain has this as a standard feature. It’s called Server Based Backup. Lars Strøm Valsted Head of Project and Analysis Columbus IT Partner A/S www.columbusitpartner.com
I can really recommend HotCopy which is the Server Based Backup included in Attain that Lars mentioned. We are running this at a clients site who has an 8Gb database and it works just fine. HotCopy is easy to schedule with AT-command and it seems to works well together with server.exe. CPU is 100% during the whole backup (just like the case with cpumoni.exe once upon a time), but the users doesn’t notice any conciderable loss in performance. //Lars
The 100% usage of the CPU is probably due to the fact that the consistency checking is enabled (the CC flag). Which by the way is the recommended way of using it according to Navision. By enabling this flag the CRC of the source database is taken and then the same procedure is repeated on the destination database for equality. This makes in my opinion the CPU to work hard. Regards Kalman
Yes I’m using cc=Yes, but the 100% CPU usage doesn’t seem to lower the performance for end-users much, so it’s no problem. //Lars
I’ve read about HotCopy.exe but I can’t find a copy on the product CD… anyone? Columbus IT (Apeldoorn) www.Columbus.nl
Just install the server and You’ll find hotcopy.exe in the same folder as server.exe //Lars
Thanx, HotCopy.exe is only available on then Attain 3.01x product CD, so stop searching on Attain 3.x Bye.
As far as I know hotcopy is part of the installation procedure of the Navision database server as Lars mentioned. Therefore, if the CD contains a server.exe it should also contain a hotcopy.exe starting from versions 3.x . This is true both for the Windows and AIX versions of the database server. Regards Kalman