Clarifications needed to perform a hot backup

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maxime_corbeau

We are running alfresco community 3.4.d and would like to perform nightly hot backups of alfresco data.

Problem
-We would like to ensure we fully understand the hot backup procedure before implementation.

Research
-We reviewed this page: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Backup_and_Restore
-For us, the backup procedures can be summarized as follows:

Cold backup procedure
[c1] Stop alfresco
[c2] Backup the database
[c3] Backup the dir.root directory
[c4] Start alfresco

Hot backup procedure
[h1] Make sure  backup-lucene-indexes folder exists under dir.root
[h2] Backup the database
[h3] Backup the dir.root directory

-We understand how to backup the database -> [h2] sorted
-We have located the dir.root directory based on the tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties config file -> [h3] sorted
-It contains a backup-lucene-indexes folder and it seems to be used (see below)

backup-lucene-indexes/archive/SpacesStore:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 alfresco alfresco 4096 2011-05-12 03:00 1db49bed-bc53-40ce-b512-686bc1f3f7c6
drwxr-xr-x 2 alfresco alfresco 4096 2011-05-12 03:00 748a76d8-fb1a-48f7-bf5a-c950661fd832
-rw-r–r– 1 alfresco alfresco  280 2011-05-11 03:00 IndexInfo
-rw-r–r– 1 alfresco alfresco  280 2011-05-11 03:00 IndexInfoBackup‍‍‍‍‍‍

Questions
[Q1] Based on the above ls output, does it seem like the backup-lucene-indexes folder is properly maintained?
[Q2] Are there any commands we can run to verify that?

There is an additional note at the bottom of the Hot backup procedure which reads:
"make sure that the cron generated in the "backup-lucene-indexes" does not run while you do the SQL backup"

[Q2] Does that mean we need to stop the creation of lucene indexes before [h2] and resune it after [h2] again?
   [Q2-1] if so, how?
   [Q2-2] if not, what does this mean?

Many thanks.

mrogers

As I understand it you can't back up the lucene index while it is "in flight" since it holds many file handles open.

Instead alfresco has a backup job called LuceneIndexBackupJob that runs at 3 a.m each night and creates a copy of the index that you can safely back up.     You just need to make sure that LuceneIndexBackupJob does not run during your "hot backup".   So for example make sure your hot backup is done at 1 a.m or 5 a.m.