Tag: bart

Essential commands for Alfresco BART

Toni de la Fuente 1 Comment

Alfresco BART usage:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh [set] [date dest]
[/bash]

But what really modes are? With modes I mean different ways to use Alfresco BART depending of what do you want to do, for instance:

  • backup: runs an incremental backup or a full if first time
  • restore: runs the restore, wizard if no arguments, see below more commands with arguments [set] [date] [dest], while [set] can also be “all” for all sets.
  • verify: verifies the backup, it compares what you have backed up and what you have in your live system.
  • collection: shows all the backup sets already in the backup archive that might be restored.
  • list: lists the files currently backed up in the archive. It shows files contained in the last backup.

Sets:

  • no value: use all backup sets
  • index: use index backup set (group) for selected mode.
  • db: use data base backup set (group) for selected mode.
  • cs: use content store backup set (group) for selected mode.
  • files: use rest of files backup set (group) for selected mode.

Now lets see how to use Alfresco BART.

To make a backup:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh backup
[/bash]

NOTE1: if first time, it makes a full backup
NOTE2: you should add this command to your root crontab with something like “0 5 * * * /path/to/alfresco-bart.sh backup” (without quotes) if you want to run your backup daily at 5AM (after Alfresco’s nightly backups and maintenance jobs).
NOTE3: running command above with without any data sets (index, db, cs or files) it will perform a backup of all data sets configured in alfresco-bart.properties. You can run “./alfresco-bart.sh backup files” to only perform a backup of your configuration files, installation and customization files or “./alfresco-bart.sh backup cs” to create a backup (full if first time or incremental if not) of your contentstore and additional stores configured.

Commands and options to restore backup:

To restore an existing backup guided by the wizard:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh restore

################## Welcome to Alfresco BART Recovery wizard ###################

This backup and recovery tool does not overrides nor modify your existing
data, then you must have a destination folder ready to do the entire
or partial restore process.

##############################################################################

Choose a restore option:
1) Full restore
2) Set restore
3) Restore a single file of your Alfresco repository
4) Restore alfresco-global.properties from a given date
5) Restore other configuration file or directory

Enter an option [1|2|3|4|5] or CTRL+c to exit:
[/bash]

To restore the last (now) existing backup of all sets (all) and leave it in /tmp:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh restore all now /tmp
[/bash]

To restore a DB backup from 14 days ago to /tmp:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh restore db 14D /tmp
[/bash]

To restore the indexes backup from december 2nd 2013:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh restore index 12-02-2013 /tmp
[/bash]

Valid date format is: now: for last backup, s: for second, m: minutes, h: hours, D: days, W: weeks, M: months or Y: years, all date values must be specified without spaces, i.e: 4D, 2W, 1Y, 33m. Dates may also be like: YYYY/MM/DD, YYYY-MM-DD, MM/DD/YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY.

To restore a single file deleted on the repository but existing in previous backup please use the backup wizard by typing: “./alfresco-bart.sh restore” and then follow instructions in the menu option “3”.

To restore the alfresco-global.properties configuration file from a given date please use the backup wizard by typing: “./alfresco-bart.sh restore” and then follow instructions in the menu option “4”.

Finally if you want to restore any other configuration, installation or custom file from your existing backup on a given date follow instructions by choosing option 5 in the recovery wizard.

NOTE4: Alfresco BART restore options or recovery wizard never will overrides your existing Alfresco files, you should specify a temporary recovery folder with enough space, then you have to move that content manually or following the instructions on the screen.

In case of source mismatch error with Duplicity try running this command:

[bash]
./alfresco-bart.sh backup all force
[/bash]

My talk about “Alfresco Backup and Recovery Tool” in the Alfresco Summit

Toni de la Fuente 3 Comments

All recorded videos has been published recently in the Alfresco Summit portal and here you go my talk “Alfresco Backup and Recovery Tool: A Real World Backup Solution” I gave in both Boston and Barcelona. I was the first public presentation about Alfresco BART.

Thanks to all who attended this session and made it one of the most-well attended and highest-rated in both cities. I’m looking forward to keep talking covering security topics as usual (I already have some “hack-ideas”…).

If you only want to see the demo, it starts at minute 33:

The presentation is published in Slideshare as well:

Remember you can download here the White Paper I mention during the talk.

If you only want to see the practical demo (best resolution in the talk video above), you can enjoy it here:

Any questions and comments are always welcome!

Alfresco Backup and Recovery Tool, release v0.1

Toni de la Fuente 12 Comments

Project was moved to Github!

Please go to https://github.com/toniblyx/alfresco-backup-and-recovery-tool for downloads, questions, issues, suggestions or feedback. Thanks!

Here you go, first release of the Alfresco Backup and Recovery Tool (Alfresco BART). An Apache 2.0 licensed tool for backup and restore of Alfresco ECM.

DESCRIPTION
Alfresco BART is a tool written in shell script on top of Duplicity for Alfresco backups and restore from a local file system, FTP, SCP or Amazon S3 of all its components: indexes, data base, content store and all deployment and configuration files. It should runs in most Linux distributions, for Windows you may use Cygwin (non tested yet).

Brief description of its features: full and incremental backups, backup policies, backup volume control, encryption with GPG, compression. Also it has a restore wizard with shortcuts for quick restore of some key components (alfresco-global.properties and more).

DISCLAIMER
This is an initial version, it has bugs and needs many improvements, please take care 🙂

FEATURES
Features in this version (v0.1):

  • 5 different modes of work: backup, restore, verify, collection and list
    • backup: runs an incremental backup or a full if first time or configured
    • restore: runs the restore wizard
    • verify: verifies the backup
    • collection: shows all the backup sets in the archive
    • list: lists the files currently backed up in the archive
  • Full and incremental backups.
  • Backup policies:
    • Periodicity: number of days of every full backup, if not backup found it does a full
    • Retention: keep full or incremental copies, clean old backups.
    • Control of number of moths to remove all backups older than or backup retention period.
  • Separated components (backup sets or groups), ability to enable or disable any set (cluster and dedicated search server aware), all backup sets supported are:
    • Indexes (SOLR or Lucene)
    • Data base (MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle)
    • Content Store plus deleted, cached and content store selector (optional).
    • Files: all configuration files, deployments, installation files, etc.
  • Restore wizard with support to:
    • restore a full backup (all sets)
    • given backup set
    • restore from a given date or days, month, year ago
    • restore alfresco-global.properties from a point in time
  • Backup volume control:
    • All backups collections are split in a volume size 25MB by default, this can help to store your backup in tapes or in order to upload to a FTP, SCP or S3 server.
  • Backup to different destinations:
    • Local filesystem
    • Remote FTP or FTPS server
    • SCP server (should have shared keys already configured, no authentication with user and password supported)
    • Amazon S3
  • Encryption with GnuPG, all backup volumes are encrypted, this feature is configurable (enable or disable).
  • Compression, all backup volumes are compressed by default
  • Log reporting, Alfresco BART creates a log file each day of operation with in a report of any activity.

DEPENDENCES

  • Duplicity 0.6 (with boto and fabric)
  • Python 
  • GnuPG
  • NcFTP
  • librsync
  • mysqldump for MySQL backup
  • pg_dump for PostgreSQL backup
  • exp for Oracle backup

TODO

  • TEST, TEST and TEST with JBOSS, MySQL, Oracle, S3, FTPs, SCP, etc.
  • Add more input and task controllers (and configuration, first run).
  • Restore single repository file.
  • Snapshots (LVM if exist, AWS if exist).
  • Support for MS SQL Server.
  • Configuration wizard (shell).
  • Share admin panel configuration page as main point to configure more options related to backup (eager, cleaner, index backup, trascan cleaner, etc.).
  • Custom logging control and reporting improvement.

DOWNLOADS and INSTALLATION 

Most recent information about tool and latest code is available in:
http://blyx.com/alfresco-bart

Please report bugs and improvements to: reverse moc.xylb@inot