[SIMS] Who's using TidyBackups to managed the SIMS backups?

[matt40k]

Hi All,
For all of those who are using TidyBackups, please upgrade to version 1.4.14.45 – available from SourceForge: Download tidybackups from SourceForge.net.

Just a reminder, the options are:

/license
This outputs the license details (LGPL), it can not be used with any other switch (if it is, they’ll be ignored)

/path:
This is how you define the path it’ll use – this option is required

/days:
This is the max age of the backups, anything older will be deleted – this option is required

/zip
This will ZIP (compress) any uncompressed files with the file extension of .bak (MSSQL Backups)

/log
This will output to a log file (amend), if no path is specified it will use the current working directory, if no filename is used, the default will be used.

/debug
If this is set, it will output debug information, no actual work will be done. It’s useful for testing as it checks file permissions and confirms what will happen without actually doing it.

/safe
If TidyBackups detects a corrupt ZIP, it will be deleted, unless /safe has been used

/preserve:
This is the min number of backups that should remain, it will overwrite the /days. The idea is if your backups stop working, you will always keep at least a few. If no days are supplied, then it will default to 6. It will keep this number of each database. The database is determined by the filename, it assumes it’s in the format of databasename_date_time.bak (or such).

Many thanks to the people who have provided feedback so far. I am currently working on v2 which will include a number of new features and any further comments, requirements, bugs will be most gratefully received and I will endeavor to include them in the final v2 release. I am also after an idea of who’s using TidyBackups currently, or planning to use it, ideally with nice lovely endorsement saying how useful it is

If people could let me know via the Edugeek forum, or PM\email if they do not want to do so publically, also let me know if you’ll be interested in being contacted when I’m ready for people to test version2.

Once again, thank you for supporting free open source software – namely TidyBackups

Matt40k

[Jobos]

We're using it, nice and reliable piece of programming and with the new options it will be even more so.

[vikpaw]

I was going to put it on my new box, haven't used it on this one as it's a temporary with both sql flavors on it. But i have recommended it to quite a few people.

What i do manually at the moment is to zip (well rar) every few days, and then delete ones from the previous month, bar keeping one weekly one. As the NM is annoyed at the space i'm using up, i might alter this to only keep one monthly, then weeklies for the past month, like a true grandfather strategy.

I think i mentioned it before but is there anyway to code this? That would be excellent. Usually the process is done with tapes, so it's a human process. If you could inspect the year, then month, keeping the first occurence for each unique combo, as protected. Only issue is it's a long wade through over time, unless you use the archive or read only bits, but that's still going to take the same amount of time.

I'm only envisaging it being used on a folder that's valid for a year. At the end of the year, some manual archiving would be done.

[Arthur]

Do you have any plans to support 7-zip compression in TidyBackups?

I did a quick test with our SQL backups and found recompressing them with 7-zip made a massive difference...

Zip:   3.22 GB (3,462,998,711 bytes)
7-zip: 1.66 GB (1,791,790,807 bytes)

[Edu-IT]

On the topic of SIMS backups, is there any problems with me using this to run a backup to our backup media at night (lets say 8pm) while the LA software runs automatically in the morning (lets say 7am) and backs up to removable disk? Will both backups be suitable to use for restore?

[vikpaw]

On the topic of SIMS backups, is there any problems with me using this to run a backup to our backup media at night (lets say 8pm) while the LA software runs automatically in the morning (lets say 7am) and backs up to removable disk? Will both backups be suitable to use for restore?

This wont backup SIMS, it merely manages the backups, since SIMS no longer zips their backups or keeps them tidy.

On the subject of your backups, be very very careful about having two routines at once. You need to know how they are being backed up. I prefer a full backup each time. If one of the routines is differential, it will blow up the integrity of the other backups because it wants to create a differential after a full, and things get confused. I had this a while back when the NM backed up via BackupExec using a differential strategy, and my daily sql backups were causing the stuff on tape to be useless.

Best thing to do is use SQL backup or dbattach backup, to a single location, then let all other systems take the file from that location, and use TidyBackups™ ( ) to keep the files in order. So there is only ever 1 live backup done daily.

[matt40k]

Do you have any plans to support 7-zip compression in TidyBackups?

I did a quick test with our SQL backups and found recompressing them with 7-zip made a massive difference...

Zip:   3.22 GB (3,462,998,711 bytes)
7-zip: 1.66 GB (1,791,790,807 bytes)

There wasn't... I'll have a look.

[matt40k]

What i do manually at the moment is to zip (well rar) every few days, and then delete ones from the previous month, bar keeping one weekly one. As the NM is annoyed at the space i'm using up, i might alter this to only keep one monthly, then weeklies for the past month, like a true grandfather strategy.

It's going to get extremely complicated. Would your month be 4 weeks or a calander month? So you keep 1st - 31st? Most people do mon-fri (or mon-sun), the fri (or sun) being kept for 4 weeks, unless it's the 4th then it stays for 13 months (or forever), or 12 months then the 13th month is kept forever (4 week month). See how complicated that is?

What could do is add is a expirely date, so you could manually change it. The new version will have the standard command-line exe, a dll which 3rd parties could use and finally a GUI. So it may be possible to intergrate into a existing (open source) backup product, or TidyBackups could become Backup Manager 2012

[vikpaw]

It is complicated, but as far as i can see, we can create the rules, so whatever works out easier, bearing in mind, some of your potential users may not fit the gregorian week / calendar!

The way i see it is the grandfather strategy is a minimum, so if by choosing 4 weekly or other such rule you end up with more then that's fine. I'd say four weekly might do the job.

It's not something i've seen automated before, it's usually manually done by the tape holder, so doing it at the file level like this is a bit new, so we can make the rules.

Maybe it is easier to code by date though, so your limits in a year are 12 per year, 4 per month, 5 per week. So you'd preserve 21 per year, 9 per month and 5 per week. Does that work? Which ones to delete are a different scenario. Yep, it's complicated, need to go and think about it some more...

[matt40k]

Not really a pretty method, but you should be able to do it with v2 (when it's finished), have 4 separate tasks, moving the files to 4 different folders, daily/weekly/monthly/yearly

Tasks overview
1. Compress backup, move to daily folder, if more than 5 backups in daily, remove it.
2. Move the 5th daily file to the weekly folder, if more than 4 backups in weekly, remove it.
3. Move the 4th weekly file to the monthly folder, if more than 12 backups in monthly, remove it.
4. Move the 12th monthly folder to the year folder

Tasks frequencies
1. Daily
2. Weekly
3. Monthly
4. Yearly

How does that sound?

[Rawns]

I've been using it County wide against every school we support (270 odd) since Capita removed their compression feature and it's working like a dream! It's made no end of difference (especally in our small Primary Schools that have smaller disks) and I'll happily endorse it if needed.

*Tried to give rep but I have to "spread the love" first...