Backing Up the Shares Database

Use the ACM Control Command (acmctl) to regularly make backups of the Shares HA database.

Note: Perform a backup of the Shares database on a regular basis. If the database is corrupted for any reason, restoring it from a healthy backup is the most (if not only) reliable solution.

You should also back up your files on dedicated media, (for example, tape or removable disk) stored at a secure location.

In order to back up the Shares database on a regular basis, you should use the -b option to the acmctl command (/opt/aspera/acm/bin/acmctl). This command performs a backup of the Shares database whenever it runs on the current active node (the node that runs the MySQL service).

Note: A backup is performed only if executed on the active node; running the command on a passive node does not create a backup.

# /opt/aspera/acm/bin/acmctl –b
Starting backup
Shares: Backup databases... Database backed up in /opt/aspera/shares/backup/shares-backup-20151028-163200
done
Compressing SQL files
done
Looking for old backups to remove
Found 0 files(s) modified for the last time more than 15 day(s) ago
Backup procedure complete

When a backup is complete, the utility removes all backup files that are older than the default of 7 days. To modify this default value, edit the /opt/aspera/acm/bin/acmctl file and set the BACKUP_MAX_AGE_IN_DAYS= variable to the desired number of days.

By default, backup files are created in a dedicated folder located on local storage: /opt/aspera/shares/backup. You can change the default storage location by modifying the BACKUP_DIR variable in the /opt/aspera/acm/bin/acmctl file or by replacing the default backup directory with a symbolic link pointing to shared storage.

On both nodes, the command should be launched every day at a specific time from the crontab:

# crontab -e
* * * * * /opt/aspera/acm/bin/acm 10.0.71.21 20 > /dev/null 2>&1
30 2 * * 1-5 /opt/aspera/acm/bin/acmctl –b > /dev/null 2>&1

The example shown above runs a backup of the Shares database at 2:30 AM every weekday of every month.

Note: See the crontab man pages for details about the crontab file format.