Scheduling system backups

This procedure describes how to configure Spectrum Technology Platform to create a backup on a regular schedule.

Schedule system backups to occur when there is little or no activity on the Spectrum Technology Platform server. While the backup is in progress, calls to services may time out and jobs may fail to run successfully.

If you are running a clustered environment, you must shut down the entire cluster, configure all nodes identically, then restart the cluster. If you are running in a separated configuration database environment, you must shut down the server only nodes, configure all nodes identically, then restart the server nodes.

Note: For more information about the Spectrum system backup properties, see Backup properties

Stop the Spectrum Technology Platform server.
Open this file in a text editor:

SpectrumDirectory\server\conf\spectrum-container.properties

Configure these properties:

spectrum.backup.enabled=true
spectrum.backup.cron=Interval

Where:

Note: For more information on the cron configuration, visit Cron Expression Generator & Explainer - Quartz (Freeformatter.com web page).

Interval

A cron expression that specifies how often to create the backup database. A cron expression consists of six space-separated values, with an optional seventh value:


Field	Valid Values	Valid Special Characters
Seconds	0-59	, - * /
Minutes	0-59	, - * /
Hours	0-23	, - * /
Day of the month	1-31	, - * ? / L W
Month	1-12 or JAN-DEC	, - * /
Day of the week	1-7 or SUN-SAT	, - * ? / L #
Year (Optional)	1970 - 2099	, - * /

For example, this expression would back up the configuration database every day at 10:00 AM:

spectrum.backup.cron=0 0 10 * * ?

This expression would back up the configuration database on the first day of the month at 2 AM:

spectrum.backup.cron=0 0 2 1 * ?

The special characters are:

*: Specifies all values. For example, if you use * in the day-of-the-month field, it means every day of the month.
?: Specifies no specific value. This is used in combination with other fields. For example, if you want to run a backup on the first day of the month and don't care which day of the week the first is on, you would specify ? in the day-of-the-week field and 1 in the day-of-the-month field.
-: Specifies a range of values. For example, SAT-SUN means the Saturday through Sunday.
,: Separates multiple values. For example, 15,30 in the day-of-the-month field means the 15th day of the month and the 30th day of the month.
/: Specifies increments. For example, 0/3 in the hour field means the backup will occur at midnight then every three hours.
L: Specifies "last", which has different meaning depending on the field in which it is used. When used in the day-of-the-month field, it means the last day of the month. When used alone in the day-of-the-week field, it means Saturday. However, when used in the day-of-the-week field in combination with a day, it means the last day-of-the-week in the month. For example, 6L means the last Friday of the month.
W: Use this value in the day-of-the-month field to specify the weekday nearest to a given day. For example, 15W means the nearest weekday to the 15th day of the month.

Directories

The directories where you want to save the configuration and index databases. You can modify the existing paths:

spectrum.backup.repository.directory=${g1.server.dir}/backup/repository
spectrum.backup.index.directory=${g1.server.dir}/backup/index

To use the backslash in the directory path, you must precede it by the escape character \. The following example specifies a shared drive to back up databases.

spectrum.backup.repository.directory=\\\\server1\\Shared\\Backup\\repository
spectrum.backup.index.directory=\\\\server1\\Shared\\Backup\\index

Note: If you are using Spectrum Technology Platform in a clustered environment, use a shared drive as the backup destination. In a clustered environment, scheduled backups occur on a random node in the cluster, so it is easier to retrieve the latest backup from a shared drive.

If running in a separated configuration database environment, configure these properties to backup the configuration database.
```
spectrum.backup.repository.enabled=true
spectrum.backup.repository.databaseURL=URLOrHostMachine
```
Save and close the properties file.
Start the Spectrum Technology Platform server.
Optional: For a clustered environment, repeat this procedure for each node in the cluster. For a separated configuration database environment, repeat this procedure for each server only node.

Note: You must specify identical values for all properties on all cluster nodes.
Some modules store additional data that is not backed up as part of the Spectrum Technology Platform scheduled backup process. You must back up this data manually, or create a separate process to back up this data.
Back up module-specific data for any of these modules if you have them installed.