Borderwave Software
-Related Links-
-Disaster Recovery for Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition-

Introduction

Disaster recovery is an essential part of the planning and deployment process. Proper disaster recovery procedures will allow you to get your system up and running quickly even after a catastrophic failure. This article will outline a recommended practice for backing up Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition.

What Needs to be Backed Up

All databases that you are using with Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition will need to be backed up if you are to have a successful restore of the software. Your backup situation will be different depending upon whether you have your own SQL Server, or you are using the MSDE database server that is shipped with Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition.

A typical SQL Server/MSDE database consists of two files. An .mdf file, which stores the actual data for your database, and an .ldf file, which is a transaction, log file that is used to maintain the integrity of the database when a large amount of database operations are being performed. In order to restore your database successfully both of these files must be backed up using one of the methods recommended below.

If you are using MSDE, read Section I, or if you are using SQL Server 7 or greater please read Section II.

Section I - MSDE

Step 1 – Locating database files

By default when Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition is installed, it will create a database within the local installation directory that you chose in the installation. (Default is C:\Program Files\Borderwave\ADTWeb). The database files will be located under the installation directory as adt.mdf and adt.ldf. Note the location of these files.

If you are not using the default database, then you would have created a database in the Database Manager program. The Database Manager program allows you to create a database anywhere on the local hard drives where MSDE is installed, so if you cannot remember where you created the database, it is best to do a search for *.mdf, and *.ldf files. Once found, note the location of these files.

Step 2 – Understanding the backup process for MSDE

Because MSDE is a database server, which is running at all, times in the background, the .mdf and .ldf files for a database are typically locked. Please note that it is not recommended that you use an “Open file” backup program to backup your locked database files because you may not be able to restore the database successfully. The approach we recommend to backing up your database is to stop your MSDE server and copy the .mdf and .ldf files. This can be accomplished manually, or by an automated batch process.

Manual –

1) Choose Start, Programs, MSDE, Service Manager and select MSSQLServer from the dropdown box.
2) Click the stop button.
3) Copy the .mdf and .ldf files.
4) Click the start button.

Automated Batch Process –

1) Create a batch file (.bat) similar to the following:

net stop MSSQLServer
copy <path.mdf> <backupfile.mdf>
copy <path.ldf> <backupfile.ldf>
net start MSSQLServer

2) Schedule the .bat file to run by configuring a scheduled task in Start, Settings, Control Panel, Scheduled Tasks. Note: When scheduling this task to run, remember that this does shut down the database server, so you will want to do this at off hours such as 2:00 AM.

Step 3 – Backing up the database

In the step above, you are simply doing a copy of the .mdf and .ldf files to another location. It is recommended that they be backed up daily from this backup location to another device such as tape, a storage area network, a backup server etc. in order to prevent data loss.

Section II – SQL Server

The process for backing up the database is much more flexible if you have a full SQL Server installation. This section describes only one method of backup, you should realize that there are many other backup options available, and we encourage you to investigate them to see if they are more appropriate for your organization.

Step 1 – Making sure SQL Server Agent is running

SQL Server Agent is a service used by Microsoft SQL Server to schedule and run jobs in the background. This allows us to fully automate the backup process. In order to ensure that the SQL Server Agent is running do the following:

1) From the SQL Server Service Manager, choose SQLServerAgent from the dropdown list.
2) If the green arrow (start) is currently enabled, it means that the service is currently not running. Please click the green arrow in order to start the service.
3) Check the option to Auto-Start service when OS Starts so SQL Server Agent will be automatically started when the computer is rebooted.

Step 2 – Configuring the backup in SQL Enterprise Manager

1) Start the SQL Enterprise Manager, and open a connection to your local server.
2) Browse to the Databases section, and select the Advanced Defect Tracking database.
3) Right-click on the database, choose All Tasks, Backup Database.
4) Select the device you wish to backup too. Your options may include tape and/or disk. (Tape will not be available unless you have a tape backup system installed on the SQL Server).
5) Once you have the backup location configured, check off the Schedule option, and use the “…” button to set a permanent schedule for the backup of the database.

Step 3 – Backing up the database.config file

The database.config file contains the necessary information that Advanced Defect Tracking needs to know about all Advanced Defect Tracking databases. If you were to restore the Advanced Defect Tracking databases without making the appropriate entries in the database.config, Advanced Defect Tracking would not be able to detect the presence of these databases. These entries can be made manually of course, but we recommend including the database.config in your backup plans if you have a SQL Server rather than MSDE.

Restoring your data

This scenario assumes a worst-case scenario where you have had to rebuild your server from the ground up. Follow the instructions below to get Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition up and running quickly.

If you are using MSDE please read Section I, or if you have SQL Server please read Section II.

Section I – Restoring data to MSDE

1) Install Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition. (For more detailed instructions here, please see our document on installing Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition).
2) Restore the .mdf and .ldf files for your database from backup into the directory where you wish the database files to be located.
3) Start the Database Manager for Advanced Defect Tracking.
4) Delete the default database that was created when you installed the software.
5) Choose Database, Restore from the menu.
6) Check the SQL Authentication box, and click Ok.
7) Enter a unique name for your database, and use the browse buttons provided to select the .mdf and .ldf for the database.
8) Click Ok.
9) A message will be displayed letting you know that the restore was successful.
10) Close Database Manager and log in to Advanced Defect Tracking.
11) Please ensure you follow the backup procedures outlined above to keep your data backed up after you have rebuilt and tested the server.

Section II – Restoring data to SQL Server

1) Install Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition. (For more detailed instructions here, please see our document on installing Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition).
2) Choose Start, Programs, Advanced Defect Tracking, Database Manager.
3) From the Database Manager select the default database that gets created with the installation and choose Database, Delete.
4) Close the Database Manager.
5) Restore the database.config file from your backup device to your Advanced Defect Tracking Web Edition virtual directory.
6) Open SQL Enterprise Manager.
7) Browse to your local SQL Server, and open the Databases section.
8) Right-click on Databases and choose All Tasks, Restore Database.
9) The steps you take from here may vary widely, so at this time they are not documented. Please refer to SQL Enterprise Manager help for help on restoring your database, or contact Borderwave’s Technical Support Department.
10) Restore all Advanced Defect Tracking databases that were backed up. Take care to restore the databases with the same names you had originally given them.
11) Close SQL Enterprise Manager and log in to Advanced Defect Tracking.
-News -

Borderwave Software announces the latest release of its highly acclaimed defect-tracking product ... <more>