Enabling AI online - suppress the actual backup?

Posted by James Palmer on 03-Oct-2016 07:39

I'm trying to enable AI on a client site. One of their databases is pretty big - backup estimates 212GB backup file. I don't actually have anywhere to put such a big file, even just for temp purposes. Is there a way I can do the backup without actually writing the file to disk? Odd request I know. 

This is on WIndows I should add. 

All Replies

Posted by George Potemkin on 03-Oct-2016 07:42

probkup online db nul enableai ?

Posted by mfurgal on 03-Oct-2016 07:45

You can probkup to /dev/null on UNIX.

You may be able to do that same on Windows, but I have never tried it.

Mike
-- 
Mike Furgal
Director – Database and Pro2 Services
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Posted by Mike Fechner on 03-Oct-2016 07:45

Backup to /dev/null ?

Outlook for Android herunterladen

Posted by George Potemkin on 03-Oct-2016 07:46

nul on Windows = /dev/null on Unix

Posted by Roy Ellis on 03-Oct-2016 07:48

Hi James,

Use the "rfutil <dbname> -C mark backedup" command?

Of course without a _real_ backup or you can't roll forward the AI files.

So you will need some sort of backup, even if it is not the OpenEdge backup.

Roy

Posted by James Palmer on 03-Oct-2016 07:50

Thanks all. I'll try NUL.

Posted by James Palmer on 03-Oct-2016 07:52

NUL seems to work testing on a small DB. Fingers crossed. I'll need to find somewhere to actually back up the DB so I can REPLTargetCreation on it for replication, but that's a problem for another day.

Posted by Brian Bowman on 03-Oct-2016 08:18

Back to what Roy said earlier...

AI without a valid backup is of almost no value. What are you going to apply it to or what is the plan?

Brian

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Posted by Tim Kuehn on 03-Oct-2016 08:28

I'd expect the value is in testing the AI collection and storage scripts before going end-to-end with the whole process.

Posted by James Palmer on 03-Oct-2016 08:29

Thanks Brian yes it's a good point. They have a nightly backup schedule which covers the issue here but I'm not allowed to overwrite last night's backup, even with a good backup, because they use the file during the day to refresh test systems as necessary. They want these to all be in synch with each other in terms of actual data.

We'll have a small window where there is no backup to apply it to, but then they've been working without ai on for over a year so it's no big deal!

Posted by ChUIMonster on 03-Oct-2016 08:49

You do these sorts of "null backups" when you want to enable after imaging online so that the NEXT backup will have all of the pieces necessary.  Sometimes (as seems to be the case with James) you just don't have enough disk space to make an extra.

Also, if memory serves, you cannot enable replication online unless ai is already enabled -- so if you're trying to do that you would get stuck making two consecutive backups and only really needing one of them.

It would be really nice if you could enable ai and get the archiver running ONLINE without having to make a fresh backup.

Not having enough disk space and not having an offsite backup are problems of their own ;)

Posted by gus bjorklund on 03-Oct-2016 08:56

>

> AI without a valid backup is of almost no value. What are you going to apply it to or what is the plan?

>

what i did when i had this same problem was to modify the nightly backup script so that if a file named “startai” existed then it would do the backup and turn on ai at the same time, and delete the file after.

so ai got turned on a little later than right now, but was done correctly.

Posted by Pieterm on 03-Oct-2016 09:27

As per Roy the simpler option is by using the openedge command...

rfutil ${DBS} -C mark backedup

I do the same before I activate the AI for replication and then I only do the valid backup post activation.

Posted by James Palmer on 03-Oct-2016 09:44

Which is all well and good if you can take the databases offline, but as far as I know you have to use probkup to enable AI online.

Posted by gus bjorklund on 03-Oct-2016 11:10

sadly, you cant mark backedup online

-gus

Posted by gus bjorklund on 03-Oct-2016 11:10

> On Oct 3, 2016, at 10:45 AM, James Palmer wrote:

>

> as far as I know you have to use probkup to enable AI online.

correct.

This thread is closed