Sun Java System Calendar Server 6.3 Administration Guide

9.5 Enabling Hot Backups for Calendar Server 6.3 Databases

This section contains an overview and instructions for enabling hot backups for Calendar Server 6.3 databases, if you did not configure them when you ran the configuration program.

This section covers the following topics:

9.5.1 What are Hot Backups in Calendar Server Version 6.3?

Ideally, hot backups consist of the latest snapshot with all of the transaction logs applied to the it, except the transaction log currently being written. The system can get behind in applying the transaction logs, depending on how busy the system is. It is possible that there might be several log files that have not yet been applied to either the database or the hot backup.

This “almost duplicate” of the live database is designed to minimize down time and data loss if something catastrophic happens, or if a corruption of the database is detected.

A new hot backup is started every 24 hours when a new snapshot is taken. The old hot backup is verified and kept until purged. For more information, see 9.2.3 How Circular Backups Work in a Calendar Server 6.3 System.

To Enable Hot Backups for a Calendar Server 6.3 System

Stop Calendar Server services by issuing the stop-cal command.

At a command line, change to the directory where the ics.conf is located:

cd /etc/opt/SUNWics5/config

Enable hot backups by setting the following ics.conf parameter to "yes":

caldb.berkeleydb.hotbackup.enable="yes"

Specify the directory path for the hot backup directory:
```
caldb.berkeleydb.hotbackup.path=
   /var/opt/SUNWics5/hotbackup_directory
```
The default hot backup directory for Calendar Server is /var/opt/SUNWics5/csdb for Solaris and /var/opt/sun/calendar/csdb for Linux. The Communications Suite installer puts the archive and hot backup directories in the csdb directory by default because it is the convenient subdirectory that is known to the installer.

Note –
It is highly recommended that the Calendar Server administrator needs to put the archive and hot backup in a different disk or volume or partition than the csdb directory because of the size issues.

The number of archive and hot backup directories is configurable. So, if you choose to have six of each archive and hot backup directories, it means that they might have 6 + 6 + 1 copies of your live database in the csdb directory. The csstored utility calculates the size of the required archive and hot backup based off of the size of the contents of the csdb directory and the physical disk that csdb is located on.

The archive and hot backup directories are installed inside the csdb directory by default for convenience. But, it should be located in a directory outside of csdb for a real life deployment.

You might choose to place hot backups on an alternate disk or disk subsystem in case of a hardware failure on the primary disk drive. Doing this might also reduce input-output contention on the primary drive or subsystem.

If you have a high availability (HA) configuration, specify the path as a subdirectory in shared storage (/global/cal/). See also, Chapter 6, Configuring Calendar Server 6.3 Software for High Availability (Failover Service).

When you have completed editing the ics.conf file, restart Calendar Server:

cal-svr-base/SUNWics5/cal/sbin/start-cal