DB2 10.5 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows

Enabling automatic backup

A database can become unusable due to a wide variety of hardware or software failures. Ensuring that you have a recent, full backup of your database is an integral part of planning and implementing a disaster recovery strategy for your system. Use automatic database backup as part of your disaster recovery strategy to enable DB2® to back up your database both properly and regularly.

About this task

You can configure automatic backup using the command line interface, or the AUTOMAINT_SET_POLICY system stored procedure. You also need to enable the health indicator db.db_backup_req, which by default is enabled. Note that only an active database is considered for the evaluation.

Procedure

To configure automatic backup using the command line interface, set each of the following database configuration parameters to ON:
- AUTO_MAINT
- AUTO_DB_BACKUP
To configure automatic backup usingIBM® Data Studio, right-click the database and select the task assistant to configure automatic backup.
To configure automatic backup using the AUTOMAINT_SET_POLICY system stored procedure:
1. Create configuration XML input specifying details like backup media, whether the backup should be online or offline, and frequency of the backup.
  You can copy the contents of the sample file called DB2DefaultAutoBackupPolicy.xml in the SQLLIB/samples/automaintcfg directory and modify the XML to satisfy your configuration requirements.
2. Optional: Create an XML input file containing your configuration XML input.
3. Call AUTOMAINT_SET_POLICY with the following parameters:
  - maintenance type: AutoBackup
  - configuration XML input: either a BLOB containing your configuration XML input text; or the name of the file containing your configuration XML input.
  See the topic Configuring an automated maintenance policy using SYSPROC.AUTOMAINT_SET_POLICY or SYSPROC.AUTOMAINT_SET_POLICYFILE for more information about using the AUTOMAINT_SET_POLICY system stored procedure.