6 Unified Inventory Management Backup and Restore
This chapter describes how to backup and restore Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management (UIM) data.
It is important to understand how to back up critical data to protect the system against different failures. You can save backup artifacts in various ways—by using periodic backups to tape or fault-tolerant disks, or by manually copying files to another machine.
WebLogic Server Related Artifacts
The following sections describe the artifacts that you should back up.
Static Artifacts
Static artifacts are those that change less frequently. These include:
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MW_Home (except user_projects/domains/domain_name) for the Administration Server and all the Managed Servers
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WL_Home (by default, it resides in MW_Home and it can be configured by the user to point to a different location) for the Administration Server and all the Managed Servers
This data is changed only while patching or upgrading the environment.
Runtime Artifacts
Runtime artifacts are those that change more frequently. These include:
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Domain_Home and UIM_Home directories in all the servers (by default, it resides in Domain_Home, but it can be configured by the user to point to a different location.)
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UIM Application artifacts (EAR files, WAR files, PROPERTIES files) which reside outside of the domain directory on each of the servers (in case of no_stage or external_stage application staging modes)
This data changes frequently while updating the domain configurations, deploying an application, and while performing other administrative changes.
Persistent Stores
A persistent store provides a built-in, high-performance storage solution for WebLogic Server subsystems and services that require persistence. For example, it can store persistent JMS (Java Messaging Service) messages or durable subscriber information, as well as temporarily store messages sent to an unavailable destination using the Store-and-Forward feature. The persistent store supports persistence to a file-based store (File Store) or to a JDBC enabled database (JDBC Store). The default store maintains its data in the Domain_Home/servers/AdminServer/data/store/default directory inside the servername subdirectory of a domain's root directory.
Using a Shared File System to Backup the Artifacts
The best practice is to store snapshots of the above artifacts either at the file system level, or using one of the models suggested below in "Using the WebLogic Backup Utility" and "Using the Pack and Unpack Utility", onto a Storage Area Network (SAN). This would ensure the local machine failure at the physical level doesn't impact the backups.
It is best to take backups before configuration changes are done.
Note:
Verify that the file/folder being backed up meets the file size or pathname length requirements for the backup utility being used. For example, the maximum pathname length for the tar application is 256 characters.
Using the WebLogic Backup Utility
You can configure Oracle WebLogic Server to make backup copies of the configuration files. This facilitates recovery in cases where configuration changes need to be reversed or in the unlikely case that configuration files become corrupted. When the Administration Server starts up, it saves a JAR file named config-booted.jar that contains the configuration files. When you make changes to the configuration files, the old files are saved in the configArchive directory under the Domain_Home directory, in a JAR file with a sequentially numbered name such as config-1.jar. The configuration archive is always local to the Administration Server host. It is a best practice to back up the archives to an external location.
Using the Pack and Unpack Utility
This utility provides a way to define templates and use the template to pack a domain for unpacking later or to unpack in another node. Please note that the domain UIM is deployed in, may contain other applications and the administrator needs to ensure the UIM specific components are packed, if the upgrade or patch is happening in UIM. You can use a template that contains a subset of a domain to create a Managed Server domain directory hierarchy on a remote machine. It would ensure that when unpacked only the UIM artifacts are restored.
Refer to the Oracle WebLogic Server documentation for more details.
Embedded LDAP
If any of your security realms use the Default Authentication, Authorization, Credential Mapping, or Role Mapping providers, you should maintain an up-to-date backup of the following directory tree:
Domain_Home/servers/AdminServer/data/ldap
In the preceding directory, Domain_Home is the domain root directory and AdminServer is the directory in which the Administration Server stores run-time and security data.
For more information backing up the embedded LDAP server data, see the following topics:
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“Configure backups for embedded LDAP servers" in the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help
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“Back Up LDAP Repository" in Managing Server Startup and Shutdown for Oracle WebLogic Server located at the following link:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/middleware/fusion-middleware/weblogic-server/12.2.1.4/start/failures.html
If the embedded LDAP server file becomes corrupt or unusable, the Administration Server will generate a NumberFormatException and fail to start. This situation is rare but can occur if the disk becomes full and causes the embedded LDAP file to enter into an invalid state.
Do not update the configuration of a security provider while a backup of LDAP data is in progress. If a change is made—for instance, if an administrator adds a user—while you are backing up the ldap directory tree, the backups in the ldapfiles subdirectory could become inconsistent. If this does occur, consistent, but potentially out-of-date, LDAP backups are available, because once a day, a server suspends write operations and creates its own backup of the LDAP data. It archives this backup in a ZIP file below the ldap/backup directory and then resumes write operations. This backup is guaranteed to be consistent, but it might not contain the latest security data.
Restoring Embedded LDAP Server File
To recover from an unusable embedded LDAP server file, complete the following steps:
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Change to the following directory:
Domain_Home/servers/AdminServer/data
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Rename the embedded LDAP server file, as in the following example:
mv ldap ldap.oldwhere mv is the Unix command used to rename the file.
By renaming the file, and not deleting it completely, it remains available to you for analysis and potential data recovery.
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Start the Administration Server.
When the Administration Server starts, a new embedded LDAP server file is created.
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Restore any data to the new embedded LDAP server that was added since the time the WebLogic domain was created.
If you have configured a backup of the embedded LDAP server, you can restore the backed up data by importing it. For information, see “Exporting and Importing Information in the Embedded LDAP Server".
Database Backup and Restore
Use Recovery Manager (RMAN) to back up, restore, and recover data files, control files, server parameter files (SPFILEs) and archived redo log files. You can use RMAN with a media manager to back up files to external storage. You can also configure parallelism when backing up or recovering Oracle RAC databases. In Oracle RAC, RMAN channels can be dynamically allocated across all of the Oracle RAC instances. Channel failover enables failed operations on one node to continue on another node. You can start RMAN from Oracle Enterprise Manager Backup Manager or from the command line.
For more information about using RMAN, see “Configuring Recovery Manager and Archiving", at the following link:
Note:
In addition to the UIM schema the MDS schema which was used in the installation process should also be backed up for failure handling.
Backup SerializedSystemIni.dat and Security Certificates
Each server instance creates a file named SerializedSystemIni.dat and locates it in the Domain_Home/security directory. This file contains encrypted security data that must be present to boot the server. You must back up this file.
If you configured a server to use SSL, you must also back up the security certificates and keys. The location of these files is user-configurable.